And Ruth found herself in that special quandary reserved for independent American girls who want to have their cake and eat it, too.

She wanted Bob Martin, and she wanted to be gratifyingly sure that Bob Martin wanted her--and then she wanted affairs to stand still at that pleasant pa.s.s, while she played about and invited adventure.

Life was so desirable as it was . . . especially with Bob Martin in the scene. But if he were unsatisfied he wouldn't remain there as part of the adjacent landscape.

Bob was no pursuing Lochinvar.

It was very delicate. She couldn't explain all her hesitation satisfactorily to herself, so she had made rather a poor job of it when she tried to explain to Bob.

Part of it was young unreadiness for the decisions and responsibilities of life, part of it was reprehensible aversion about shutting the door to other adventures, and part of it was her native energy, as yet unemployed, aware of a larger world and anxious to play some undivined part in its destinies.

She had always been furious that the war had come too soon for her. She would have loved to have gone over there, and known the mud and doughnuts and doughboys . . . and the excitement and the officers. . . .

But Bob wasn't going to dangle much longer. He hadn't a doubt but that everything was all right and he was in haste to taste the a.s.surance.

And Ruth wasn't going to lose him.

These hesitations of hers would convey nothing to his youthful masculinity but that she didn't care enough. And his was not the age that appreciates the temporizing half loaf.

So that trip up the mountain meant for them much youthful discussion, much searching of wills and hearts and motives, a threatening gloom upon his part, and a struggling defensiveness upon hers.

Small wonder that Maria Angelina and her companion were not remembered!

It was not until she was at the very top of old Baldy, and again a part of the general group that Ruth had the thought to look about her and recognize her cousin's absence.

"They _are_ taking their time," she remarked to Bob.

"Glad they're enjoying it," he gave back with a disgruntled air that Ruth determinedly ignored.

"I guess Ri-Ri's no good at a climb," she said. "This little old mountain must have got her."

"Oh, Johnny's strong right arm will do the work," he returned indifferently.

"But they ought to be here now. You don't suppose they missed the way?"

Mrs. Blair, overhearing, suggested, and turned to look down the steep path that they had come.

Bob scouted the idea of such a mishap.

"Johnny knows his way about. They'll be along when they feel like it,"

he predicted easily, and Mrs. Blair turned to the arrangement of supper with a slight anxiety which she dissembled beneath casual cheerfulness.

In her heart she was vexed. Dreadfully noticeable, she thought, that persistent lagging of theirs. She might have expected it of Johnny Byrd--he had a way of making new girls conspicuous--but she had looked for better things from Maria Angelina.

It was too bad. It showed that as soon as you gave those cloistered girls an inch they took an ell.

Outwardly she spoke with praise of her charge. Julia Martin, a youthful aunt of Bob's, was curious about the girl.

"She's the loveliest creature," she declared with facile enthusiasm, as she and Mrs. Blair delved into a hamper that the Martins' chauffeur and butler had shouldered up before the picnickers.

"And so navely young--I don't see how her mother dared let her come so far away."

"Oh--her mother wanted her to see America," Mrs. Blair gave back.

"She must be having a wonderful time," pursued the young lady. "She was simply a picture at the dance. . . . Think of giving a mountain climb the night after the dance," she added in a lower voice. "Bob and his mother are perfectly mad. I think they want to kill their guests off--perhaps there's method in their madness. . . . I never saw anything quite like her," she resumed upon Maria Angelina. "I fancy Johnny Byrd hasn't either!"

"Wasn't she pretty?" agreed Mrs. Blair with pleasantness, laying out the spoons. "Yes, it's very interesting for her to have this," she went on, "before she really knows Roman society. . . . She will come out as soon as she returns from America, I suppose. The eldest sister is being married this fall, and the next sister and Maria Angelina are about of an age."

"Little hard on the sister unless she is a raving, tearing beauty," said the intuitive Miss Martin with a laugh. "Perhaps they are sending Maria Angelina away to keep her in abeyance!"

"Perhaps," Mrs. Blair a.s.sented. "At any rate, with this preliminary experience, I fancy that little Ri-Ri will make quite a sensation over there."

It was as if she said plainly to the curious young aunt that this pilgrimage was only a prelude in Maria Angelina's career, and she certainly did not take its possibilities for any serious finalities.

But the youthful aunt was not intimidated.

"She'll make a sensation over _here_ if she carries off the Byrd millions," she threw out smartly.

Mrs. Blair smiled with an effect of remote amus.e.m.e.nt. Inwardly she knew sharp annoyance. She wished she could smack that loitering child. . . .

Very certainly she would betray no degrading interest in her fortunes.

The Martins were not to think that she was intent on placing _any one_!

"Johnny Byrd's a child," said she indifferently.

"He's been of age two years," said the youthful aunt, "and he's out of college now and very much a catch--all his vacations used to be hairbreadth escapes. Of course he courts danger," she threw in with a little laugh and a sidelong look.

But Mrs. Blair was not laughing. She was blaming herself for the negligence which had made this situation possible, although--extenuation made haste to add within her--no one could humanly be expected to be going up and down a trail all afternoon to gather in the stragglers. And she had told Ruth to wait.

"She's probably just tired out," said the stout widower with strong accents of sympathy. "Climb too much for her, and very sensibly they've turned back."

"If I could only be sure. If I could only be sure she wasn't hurt--or lost," said Mrs. Blair doubtfully.

"Lost!" Bob Martin derided. "Lost--on a straight trail. Not unless they jolly wanted to!"

"Don't spoil the party, mother," was Ruth's edged advice. "Ri-Ri hasn't broken any legs or necks. And she wasn't alone to get lost. She just gave up and Johnny Byrd took her home. I know her foot was blistered at the dance last night and that's probably the matter."

It was the explanation they decided to adopt.

Mrs. Blair, recalling that this was not her expedition, made a double duty of appearing sensibly at ease, although the nervous haste with which a sudden noise would bring her to alertness, facing the path, revealed some inner tension.

The young people were inclined to be hilarious over the affair, inventing fresh reasons for the absent ones, reasons that ranged from elopement to wood p.u.s.s.ies.

"There was one around last night," the tennis champion insisted.

But the hilarity was only a flash in the pan. After its flare the party dragged. Curiosity preoccupied some; uneasiness communicated itself to others. And the frank abstraction of Ruth and Bob had a depressing effect upon the atmosphere.

And the runaways were missed. Johnny Byrd had an infectious way of making a party go and Maria Angelina's sweet soprano had become so much a part of every gathering that its absence now made song a dejection.

Other things of Maria Angelina than her soprano were missed, also.