"You're not much of an explorer, are you?"
"A rather good one, Mr. Rivett. But--you know there are still certain
peaks in the world that defy approach," she added audaciously.
"I'm a peak, am I?"
He came so near to smiling that the girl watched him with increasing
interest.
"You know," she said, "that you _are_ not exactly talkative, Mr. Rivett.
How is a girl to form any definite idea of a--a--sphinx?"
"That's two names you've called me already"--he looked at his watch--"in
the last four minutes--a peak and a sphinx."
She was laughing so unrestrainedly now that the corners of his eyes
began to wrinkle a trifle.
He said: "What do you think of a self-made man who was once
schoolmaster, day laborer, donkey-engine tender, foreman--all kinds of
things, and whose wife was washing out a wood shed when he first met
her?"
"Is that you?"
"It is. What do you think of such a man's chances in New York?"
"Financial?"
"Social."
"I don't know New York."
"You're highly connected there?"
"It is a very distant connection.... Mr. Edgerton chooses to acknowledge
it."
"He's a snob, isn't he?"
"Not in the slightest," she said pleasantly; but the blood mounted to
her cheeks and betrayed her.
"You like him?"
"Naturally."
"Unnaturally, too?"
"Kinship has little to do with my liking him."
"He's rather easy-going, isn't he?"
She flushed up again, and turned her clear eyes on his little brown
ones.
"Don't you like him?" she asked.
"Isn't he easy-going?"
"He has not yet found himself. He is an intelligent, warm-hearted,
high-minded man, capable of taking an honorable position in the
world.... And I do not doubt that he will one day take and keep it."
"He was in iron, was he not--Edgerton, Tennant & Co.?"
"Yes."
Mr. Rivett thought for a while. "By the way," he said, "I neglected to
answer your question. I'll answer it now. I like Mr. Edgerton."
"Thank you," said Diana, not perfectly aware of what she said.
Mr. Rivett sat buried in meditation for fully five minutes; at the end
of that period he turned his glasses on her.
"I want to gossip with you," he said abruptly.
[Illustration: "'I want to gossip with you,' he said abruptly."]
She began to laugh again.
"How did you discover that I am such a dreadful gossip? Begin at once,
please. I adore picking to pieces my absent acquaintances."
"Yes--tearing 'em to tatters, the way you demolished Mr. Edgerton just
now," he said grimly. "Well, I'll begin the scandal bee. Where did you
know Mr. Inwood?"
"In Keno, Nevada," she said coolly, wondering what was impending.
"Know him long?"
"One winter."
"In Keno?"
"In Keno."
"Like him?"
"Immensely."
"Oh! So you're going to tear him to tatters, too?"
"Just as I demolished Mr. Edgerton. They're the two nicest men I ever
knew. It's odd, isn't it, that I didn't know they were such intimate
friends before Mr. Inwood came here?"
"Are they?"
"I understand so."
"And you didn't know it?"
"How should I? I never saw Mr. Inwood except that winter in Keno; and I
don't know my cousin intimately."
"How well _do_ you know your cousin?"
The girl sat thinking for a moment, then looked up frankly.
"Perhaps you can judge," she said, and told him the history of her
friendship with Edgerton from their meeting in his studio to their
arrival at Adriutha. And Mr. Rivett listened without a shade of
expression on his face, but his little dark eyes seemed to bore her
through and through.
"That," she said, "is the situation." She hesitated, then meeting his
gaze candidly, but with a slight increase of color in her cheeks:
"I told you this because I wanted to be fair to Mr. Edgerton--in
case--in the event of you--your family--people here not considering us
of much importance. Mr. Edgerton is not responsible for us.... I think
he came from some boyish impulse--some chivalrous notion that my sister
and I, being alone, might receive perhaps more consideration if a man of
our family accompanied us."
"I see."
"I wanted you to see. I'm glad I've had an opportunity to make the
matter plain that Mr. Edgerton is in no way responsible for any
shortcomings on our part."
"Nobody complains of you."
"Oh, no; everybody is nice to us. But--we--do things--which--women of
his family--perhaps would not do."
"Smoke?"
"Yes. Cocktails, too. Also we gamble, dreadfully."
"Wouldn't his people?"
"I don't know," said the girl. "I don't know New York. One reads about
these rather harmless vices being universal there. But Silvette and I
are really provincial. Provincials usually go too far in either
direction. It was only that I did not wish people to judge Mr. Edgerton
from us."
Mr. Rivett scraped the gravel with his cane for a moment, then:
"So you like Inwood?"
"Very much."
"Wasn't he mixed up in some mess or other?"
"I never heard so," she said, surprised.
"Oh! What was he doing in Keno?"
She laughed. "Visiting, as we were, I suppose. You know we weren't
being divorced."
"Glad to hear it."
"You didn't _think_ so!" she exclaimed.
His eyes twinkled.
"No," he said, "I didn't. But you can't throw a stone into a crowd and
give odds on its not hitting a divorced person."
"Does divorce shock you?"
"Not in the least; I'm past shocks, young lady. Who is Mrs. Wemyss?"
"Your own guest?"
He winced. "I'm asking you. We made her acquaintance at the Plaza last
winter.... It seems that she and young Inwood knew each other in Keno."
"_That_ is where I've seen her!" said Diana with innocent conviction.
"I knew I'd seen her somewhere.... But she was very much slighter--oh,
very much--and extremely pretty."
"Divorcee?"
"Isn't she a widow?"
"I guess so.... No matter." ... He stood up briskly; she rose, too,
understanding that the interview was ended--feeling slightly
uncomfortable because she had permitted herself to be so thoroughly
pumped. Yet there seemed to be nothing significant in the operation or
results.
"I'm going for a ride with my wife"--he meant drive--"just a buggy and
an old plug. She and I enjoy it, Miss Tennant."
To her surprise he took her hand between his own dry little palms and
pressed it.
"You're a good girl," he said; "you and your sister--and Edgerton--he's
all right--you're good children--and all off the same tree, little
lady--all off the same old block in the beginning--that's plain as
preaching.... Do you really like my Christine?"
"Yes, I do."
"And Jack?"
"Exceedingly."
"That's right; they like you, too. They ought to. They're good
children, and so are you. Good-by."
*CHAPTER X*
*COMPOS MENTIS*
As Diana put her pony to a full gallop and rode him off, Edgerton's
mount fell, and the young fellow lay sprawling on the sod.
He was on his feet immediately; so was his polo pony. When Diana pulled
up, whirled her mount and came scurrying back, Edgerton had picked up
his mallet and stood resting against his saddle.
"All right, Jim?" she asked briefly.
"All right, thanks."
The color had left his face under the tan, and his expression was queer.
"You look rather white," she insisted. "Did Parsnip kick you?"
"It's nothing," he said, smiling. "Put Jack in; I've got some business
to talk over with Mr. Rivett."
"You're _sure_ you're all right?"
"What a fuss you are!" he said, leading Parsnip across the field toward
a groom.
The girl looked after him, saw the groom slip a white wool polo coat
over the young man's shoulders and take the pony, saw Edgerton drop his
hands into the pockets and stroll across the field toward the terrace;
then, lifting her mallet, she hailed Jack Rivett in a clear, ringing
call, and cantered away up field.
As Mr. Rivett senior stood waiting for his wife at the foot of the
terrace steps, wrapped in his old-fashioned linen duster and pulling on
a pair of worn driving gloves, Edgerton, in white from head to foot,
came across the lawn, the youthful antithesis of the older man--tall,
powerfully built, his smooth skin and short, thick hair burned by the
summer sun--a graceful, leisurely figure agreeable to see on anybody's
lawn.
"Good morning!" he said pleasantly, stopping on the gravel drive.
"Good morning, Mr. Edgerton. Are the young people amusing themselves?"
"I think so--thoroughly."
"You came a cropper?"
"I sometimes do."
"You are amusing yourself?"
"I always do."
"So do I," nodded Rivett, buttoning his gloves. "Never was bored in my
life--poor compliment to oneself, Mr. Edgerton, to find life a bore."
Edgerton smiled and stood with his left hand in his coat pocket, looking
out at the flat field beyond, where half a dozen young people on lively
ponies swung their mallets and cantered leisurely about in pretense of
practice.
Presently Diana, Christine, and Inwood swung their ponies, and came
driving pell-mell down the field after the ball.
"Your cousins seem to be up to anything," commented Rivett.
"They were bred to everything worth while."
"Oh! Is polo worth while, as you call it?"
"Do you wish to start such a complex discussion?" asked Edgerton,
laughing.
"No; my wife will be here in a moment.... You're looking very pale,
young man," he added abruptly. "Did that pony hurt you?"
"A little.... Mr. Rivett, do you need my services any longer?"
"I don't _need_ anybody's services," said the little man dryly. "I
never _needed_ anybody in all my life--except my wife. There's no such
thing as a necessary man. No man ever lived who couldn't be
replaced.... What's the matter?"