The little group of women about him smiled. Only, he noticed the men stood apart—the men, and one girl, who had never moved from a sofa in the corner.
Vickers turned and looked at her, and as he did so, Mrs. Raikes exclaimed:
“What a shame it is! We have monopolized him so that his own cousin has not had a chance to speak to him. Come, Nellie, we’ll make room for you.”
Thus challenged Nellie rose very slowly, and Vickers’s eyes rested on her long slim figure, and immobile little face.
“Why did not you cable, Bob?” she said.
He had on his voyage home imagined every possible sort of meeting between them—meetings which ranged from frenzied reproaches to caresses, but he had not imagined just this.
Even the rest of the company seemed to feel it was an inadequate greeting to a cousin who had been away twelve years, and they turned with some amusement to catch Vickers’s answer.
“I did not cable,” he said good-temperedly, “because I had neither the time nor the price.”
There seemed to be no answer to this, and Nellie attempted none. Her eyebrows went up a little, and she returned to her sofa. Mrs. Raikes hastily followed her to say good-night.
“I suppose we must leave you to a family reunion,” she said, and added, lowering her voice: “Such a nice prodigal, Nellie. If I were you, I should fall in love with him at once.”