Dead silence. Then, "It was a gentleman's lie----"

"Gentlemen do not lie. Go to him this minute, Randy, and tell him that it isn't true."

"Give me three days, Becky. If in that time he doesn't try to see you or call you up, I'll go---- But give me three days."

She wavered. "What good will it do?"

He caught up her cold little hands in his. "You will have a chance to get back at him. And when you stick in the knife, you can turn it--until it hurts."

III

It was while the family at Huntersfield were at dinner that the telephone rang. Calvin answered, and came in to say that Miss Becky was wanted.

She went listlessly. But the first words over the wire stiffened her.

It was George's voice, quick imploring. Saying that he had something to tell her. That he must see her----

"Let me come, Becky."

"Of course."

"You mean that I--may----?"

"Why not?"

He seemed to hesitate. "But I thought----"

Her laugh was light and clear. "I must get back to my dinner. I have only had my soup. And I am simply--_starving_----"

It was not what he had expected. Not in the least. As he hung up the receiver he was conscious too of a baffled feeling that Becky had, in a sense, held the reins of the situation.

In spite of her famished condition, Becky did not at once go to the dining-room. She called up King's Crest, and asked for Randy.

She wanted to know, she said, whether he had anything on for the evening.

No? Then could he come over and bring the boarders? Oh, as many of them as would come. And they would dance. She was bored _to death_. Her laugh was still clear and light, and Randy wondered.

Then she went back to the dinner table and ate the slice of lamb which the Judge had carved for her. She ate mint sauce and mashed potatoes, she ate green corn pudding, and a salad, and watermelon. Her cheeks were red, and Aunt Claudia felt that Becky was looking much better. For how could Aunt Claudia know that everything that Becky ate was like sawdust to her palate. She found herself talking and laughing a great deal, and Truxton teased her.

After dinner she went up-stairs with Mary and showed her a new way to do her hair, and found an entrancing wisp of a frock for Mary to wear.

"It will be great fun having the boarders from King's Crest. There are a lot of young people of all kinds--and not many of them our kind, Mary."

Mary smiled at her. "I am not quite your kind, am I?"

"Why not? And oh, Mary, you are happy, happy. And you are lovely with your hair like that, close to your head and satin-smooth."

Mary, surveying herself in the gla.s.s, gave an excited laugh. "Do you know when I married Truxton I never thought of this?"

"Of what?" Becky asked.

"Of pretty clothes--and dances--and dinners. I just knew that he--loved me, and that he had to leave me. But I don't suppose I could make the world believe it."

"Truxton believes it, doesn't he, Mary?"

"Yes."

"And I believe it. And what do you care for the others? It is what we know of ourselves, Mary," she drew a quick breath. "It is what we know of ourselves----"

Becky was wearing the simple frock of pale blue in which George had seen her on that first night when he came to Huntersfield.

"Aren't you going to change?" Mary asked.

"No. It is too much trouble." Becky was in front of the mirror. Her pearls caught the light of the candles. Her bronze hair was a shining wave across her forehead. "It is too much trouble," she said, again, and turned from the mirror.

She had a dozen frocks that had come in the rosy hamper--frocks that would have made the boarders open their eyes. Frocks that would have made Dalton open his. But Becky had the feeling that this was not the moment for lovely clothes. She felt that she would be cheapened if she decked herself for George.

When the two girls went down-stairs Truxton was waiting for his wife. "I thought you would never come," he said. He drew her within the circle of his arm, and they went out into the garden. The Judge and Mrs. Beaufort were on the porch. Becky sat on the step and leaned her head against Aunt Claudia's knee.

"What in the world made you ask all those people over, Becky?" the Judge demanded.

"Oh, they're great fun, Grandfather, and I felt like it."

"Have you planned anything for them to eat, Claudia?"

"Watermelons. Calvin has put a lot of them in the spring."

The stars were thick overhead. Becky looked up at them and relaxed a little. Since Dalton had spoken to her over the wire she had gone through the motions of doing normal things. She had eaten and talked, and now she was sitting quite still on the step while Aunt Claudia smoothed her hair, and the Judge talked of things to eat.

But shut up within her was a clock which ticked and never stopped. "_He will come--when he thinks--you are mine---- He will come--when he thinks--you are mine----_"

Randy and his mother arrived in Little Sister, with two of the boarders for good measure in the back seat. They had dropped Major Prime at Flippins', where he was to make a call on Madge MacVeigh. He had promised to come later, however, if Randy would drive over and get him.

The rest of the boarders were packed variously into their cars and the surrey, and as soon as they arrived they proceeded to occupy the lawn and the porch, and to overflow the garden. They made a great deal of pleasant noise about it, and the white gowns of the women, and the white flannels of the men gave an impressionistic effect of faint blue against the deeper blue of the night.

Within the house, the rugs were up in the drawing-room, the library, the dining-room, and the wide hall; there sounded, presently, the tinkling music of the phonograph, and there was the unceasing movement of white-clad figures which seemed to float in a golden haze.

Becky danced a great deal, with Randy, with the younger boarders, and with the genial gentleman. She laughed with an air of unaffected gayety.

And she felt that her heart stopped beating, when at last she looked up and saw Dalton standing in the door.

She at once went towards him, and gave him her hand. "I wonder if you know everybody?"

Her clear eyes met his without self-consciousness. He attempted a swagger. "I don't want to know everybody. How do they happen to be here?"

"I asked them. And they are really very nice."

He did not see the niceness. He had thought to find her in the setting which belonged to her beauty. The silent night, the fragrance of the garden, the pale statues among the trees, and himself playing the game with a greater sense of its seriousness than ever before.

Throughout the evening George watched for a chance to see Becky alone.

Without conspicuously avoiding him, she had no time for him. He complained constantly. "I want to talk to you. Run away with me, Becky--and let these people go."