"I?"
"Certainly," he said with so much meaning in the word that she flushed.
"Oh, I see," she mused, with understanding. "Can't you trust Vivian to do that for you?" There was intense irony in the question.
He laughed disdainfully. "Vivvy wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance with you, take it from me." He stopped abruptly at the doorway, a frown of recollection creasing his seamless brow. "Oh, that reminds me, there is something else I want to discuss with you, Sara. After luncheon will be time enough. Remind me of it, will you?"
"Not if it is to be unpleasant," she replied, with a sudden chill in her heart.
"It's this, in a word: Viv would like to have Miss Castleton over to spend a month or so with her after the—well, after the house is open." He came near to saying after the engagement was announced.
Sara's decision was made at once. Her face hardened.
"That is quite out of the question, Leslie," she said.
"We can discuss it, can't we?" he demanded loftily.
She did not condescend to reply. They were now in the wide hallway, and she was a step or two ahead of him. Voices could be heard in the recess at the lower end of the hall, beyond the staircase, engaged in what appeared to be a merry exchange of opinions. He caught the sound of a low laugh from Booth. There was something acutely subdued about it, as if a warning had been whispered by some one. Leslie's sensitive imagination pictured the unseen girl with her finger to her lips.
He caught up with Sara, and, curiously red in the face, snapped out with dogged insistence:
"Mother is set on having her come, Sara. Can't you see the way the land lays? They—"
Hetty and Booth came into view at that instant, and his lips were closed. The painter was laying a soft, filmy scarf over the girl's bare shoulders as he followed close behind her.
"Hello!" he cried, catching sight of Wrandall. "Train late, old chap? We've been expecting you for the last hour. How are you?"
He came up with a frank, genuine smile of pleasure on his lips, his hand extended. Leslie rose to the occasion. His self-esteem was larger than his grievance. He shook Booth's hand heartily, almost exuberantly.
"Didn't want to disturb you, Brandy," he cried, cheerily. "Besides, Sara wouldn't let me." He then passed on to Hetty, who had lagged behind. Bending low over her hand, he said something commonplace in a very low tone, at the same time looking slyly out of the corner of his eye to see if Booth was taking it all in. Finding that his friend was regarding him rather fixedly, he obeyed a sudden impulse and raised the girl's slim hand to his lips. As suddenly he released her fingers and straightened up with a look of surprise in his eyes; he had distinctly heard the agitated catch in her throat. She was staring at her hand in a stupefied sort of way, holding it rigid before her eyes for a moment before thrusting it behind her back as if it were a thing to be shielded from all scrutiny save her own.
"You must not kiss it again, Mr. Wrandall," she said in a low, intense voice. Then she passed him by and hurried up the stairs, without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
He blinked in astonishment. All of a sudden there swept over him the unique sensation of shyness—most unique in him. He had never been abashed before in all his life. Now he was curiously conscious of having overstepped the bounds, and for the first time to be shown his place by a girl. This to him, who had no scruples about boundary lines!
All through luncheon he was volatile and gay. There was a bright spot in his cheek, however, that betrayed him to Sara, who already suspected the temper of his thoughts. He talked aeroplaning without cessation, directing most of his conversation to Booth, yet thrilled with pleasure each time Hetty laughed at his sallies. He was beginning to feel like a half-baked schoolboy in her presence, a most deplorable state of affairs he had to admit.
"If you hate the trains so much, and your automobile is out of whack, why don't you try volplaning down from the Metropolitan tower?" demanded Booth in response to his lugubrious wail against the beastly luck of having to go about in railway coaches with a lot of red-eyed, nose-blowing people who hadn't got used to their spring underwear as yet.
"Sinister suggestion, I must say," he exclaimed. "You must be eager to see my life blood scattered all over creation. But, speaking of volplaning, I've had three lessons this week. Next week Bronson says I'll be flying like a gull. 'Gad, it's wonderful. I've had two tumbles, that's all,—little ones, of course,—net result a barked knee and a peeled elbow."
"Watch out you're not flying like an angel before you get through with it, Les," cautioned the painter. "I see that a well-known society leader in Chicago was killed yesterday."
"Oh, I love the danger there is in it," said Wrandall carelessly. "That's what gives zest to the sport."
"I love it, too," said Hetty, her eyes a-gleam. "The glorious feel of the wind as you rush through it! And yet one seems to be standing perfectly still in the air when one is half a mile high and going fifty miles an hour. Oh, it is wonderful, Mr. Wrandall."
"I'll take you out in a week or two, Miss Castleton, if you'll trust yourself with me."
"I will go," she announced promptly.
Booth frowned. "Better wait a bit," he counselled. "Risky business, Miss Castleton, flying about with fledgelings."
"Oh, come now!" expostulated Wrandall with some heat. "Don't be a wet blanket, old man."
"I was merely suggesting she'd better wait till you've got used to your wings."
"Jimmy Van Wickle took his wife with him the third time up," said Leslie, as if that were the last word in aeroplaning.
"It's common report that she keeps Jimmy level, no matter where she's got him," retorted Booth.
"I dare say Miss Castleton can hold me level," said Leslie, with a profound bow to her. "Can't you, Miss Castleton?"
She smiled. "Oh, as for that, Mr. Wrandall, I think we can all trust you to cling pretty closely to your own level."
"Rather ambiguous, that," he remarked dubiously.
"She means you never get below it, Leslie," said Booth, enjoying himself.
"That's the one great principle in aeroplaning," said Wrandall, quick to recover. "Vivian says I'll break my neck some day, but admits it will be a heroic way of doing it. Much nobler than pitching out of an automobile or catapulting over a horse's head in Central Park." He paused for effect before venturing his next conclusion. "It must be ineffably sublime, being squashed—or is it squshed?—after a drop of a mile or two, isn't it?"
He looked to see Miss Castleton wince, and was somewhat dashed to find that she was looking out of the window, quite oblivious to the peril he was in figuratively for her special consideration.
Booth was acutely reminded that the term "prig" as applied to Leslie was a misnomer; he hated the thought of the other word, which reflectively he rhymed with "pad."
It occurred to him early in the course of this rather one-sided discussion that their hostess was making no effort to take part in it, whether from lack of interest or because of its frivolous nature he was, of course, unable to determine. Later, he was struck by the curious pallor of her face, and the lack-lustre expression of her eyes. She seldom removed her gaze from Wrandall's face, and yet there persisted in the observer's mind the rather uncanny impression that she did not hear a word her brother-in-law was saying. He, in turn, took to watching her covertly. At no time did her expression change. For reasons of his own, he did not attempt to draw her into the conversation, fascinated as he was by the study of that beautiful, emotionless face. Once he had the queer sensation of feeling, rather than seeing, a haunted look in her eyes, but he put it down to fancy on his part. Doubtless, he concluded, the face or voice or manner of her husband's brother recalled tragic memories from which she could not disengage herself. But undoubtedly there was something peculiar in the way she looked at Leslie through those dull, unblinking eyes. It was some time before Booth realised that she made but the slightest pretence of touching the food that was placed before her by the footman.
And Leslie babbled on in blissful ignorance of, not to say disregard for, this strange ghost at the feast, for, to Booth's mind, the ghost of Challis Wrandall was there.
Turning to Miss Castleton with a significant look in his eyes, meant to call her attention to Mrs. Wrandall, he was amazed to find that every vestige of colour had gone from the girl's face. She was listening to Wrandall and replying in monosyllables, but that she was aware of the other woman's abstraction was not for an instant to be doubted. Suddenly, after a quick glance at Sara's face, she looked squarely into Booth's eyes, and he saw in hers an expression of actual concern, if not alarm.
Leslie was in the middle of a sentence when Sara laughed aloud, without excuse or reason. The next instant she was looking from one to the other in a dazed sort of way, as if coining out of a dream.
Wrandall turned scarlet. There had been nothing in his remarks to call for a laugh, he was quite sure of that. Flushing slightly, she murmured something about having thought of an amusing story, and begged him to go on, she wouldn't be rude again.
He had little zest for continuing the subject and sullenly disposed of it in a word or two.
"What the devil was there to laugh at, Brandy?" he demanded of his friend after the women had left them together on the porch a few minutes later. Hetty had gone upstairs with Mrs. Wrandall, her arm clasped tightly about the older woman's waist.
"I dare say she was thinking about you falling a mile or two," said Booth pleasantly.
But he was perplexed.