"Lottie Prynne; it isn't to be announced until his return from the
Philippines; she told me so herself."
A footman was placing the silver-collared decanters on the table by
the fire, while Van Citters had drawn up a chair and was telling Mrs.
Prynne's fortune with cards. She was dressed in pale blue and her
pretty face was bloomingly childlike; she rested one white elbow on
the table and nestled her round chin in her upturned, pink palm, her
hair showing exquisite blond tints except where it grew out dark at
the roots. She looked so pretty and neat in her blue gown that she
reminded you of those dear little, shallow, blue and white saucepans
that are so useful to mix sweeties in, only she would have described
herself as the "sweetie," had she been asked to interpret the analogy.
Van Citters thought her "jolly pretty" and he rather liked to flirt
with her when Pamela had been trying; not that this diversion made
Pamela more amiable, but it was a counter-irritant.
Meanwhile Johnstone Astry came back with Colonel Sedley, whom Eva had
previously rescued from Sidney Billop. The colonel was a fresh-faced
man of fifty, whose increasing girth had ruined a dapper figure. He
liked the open-air life in the country, but could not afford to keep
horses and hounds as Astry did, so he visited Astry. Sidney Billop had
transferred his attentions to Eva, and Eva, regretting her generosity
to Sedley, was painfully aware that his pale hair was parted crooked
and his pale eyes were more watery than usual. His head was so big and
round and he tapered so abruptly toward the feet that in early life
he had been called, by a small but appreciative circle of friends,
"the Tadpole." Sidney was the only son of a fond and admiring mother,
and Dr. Macclesfield had once remarked that a merciful Providence had
withheld a duplicate. Sidney was the amazing result of an anxious
maternal supervision that had engulfed him, like a poultice, from
his cradle to his final exit from college, where he had been a kind
of mental and moral sponge, absorbing only bad habits and small beer.
He kept laughing incessantly now, with a succulent gurgle, at the
interruptions of Count Massena, who had come over to help Eva out of
her dilemma. But this triangular scene was completely disrupted by
Mrs. Van Citters. She had been nibbling a piece of cake when a sudden
thought diverted her from her peaceful occupation.
"Does any one know what became of the boy who was hurt so seriously by
Eva's motor the other day?" she asked abruptly.
She had struck a discordant note and there was a slight awkward pause,
of the kind which usually occurs when some one drops a piece of bread
butter-side down.
"Rachel sent him to the hospital," replied Astry, with a smiling glance
at his sister-in-law. "Rachel is a society for regulating the universe
at her own expense."