“Oh no, Hilda can’t,” laughed Mrs. Archinard.
“And where is the Captain off to?” queried Peter hastily. He felt that he would like to shake Mrs. Archinard. Hilda’s stubborn silence might certainly be irritating, and Odd had sympathy for parental claims and wishes, especially concerning the advisability of a beautiful girl walking in the streets at night unescorted, sacrificed to youthful conceit; but Mrs. Archinard’s personality certainly weakened all claims, and her taste was as certainly atrocious.
“Papa,” said Katherine, pouring out the tea, “is going to-morrow morning to the Riviera. Lucky papa!” Odd thought with some amusement of the £120 that constituted papa’s “luck.” “I have only been once to Monte Carlo, and I won such a lot. Only imagine how forty pounds turned my head. I revelled in hats and gloves for a whole year. Then we go to-morrow, Mr. Odd? I have my own bicycle. I have kept it near the Porte Dauphine, and you can hire a very nice one at the same place.”
“May I call for you here at ten, then? Will that suit you?”
“Very well.” Odd watched Katherine as she carried the tea and cake to her sister. Hilda gave a little start.
“O Katherine, how good of you! I didn’t realize what you were doing.”
“It is you who are good, my pet,” said Katherine in a low, gentle voice. Peter thought it a pretty little scene.
“A great deal of latitude must be granted to the young person who invented that teapot,” he said to Hilda. “One must work hard to do anything in art, mustn’t one? A most lovely teapot, Hilda.”
“I am glad you like it.” Hilda smiled her thanks, but her eyes still expressed that distance and reserve that showed no consciousness of the past, no intention of admitting it as a link to the present. She did not seem exactly shy, but her whole manner was passive—negative. Katherine probably thought that Mr. Odd had by this time realized the futility of an attempt to draw out the unresponsive artist, for she seated herself between Odd and the sofa, thus protecting Hilda from Mrs. Archinard’s severities and Odd from the ineffectual necessity for talking to Hilda. Odd thought that were Katherine and Mrs. Archinard not there he might have “come at” Hilda, but the sense of ease Katherine brought with her was undeniable. She was charmingly mistress of herself, made him talk, appealed prettily to her mother, who even gave more than one melancholy laugh, and, with a tactful give and take, yet kept the reins of conversation well within her own hands.
Odd found her a nice girl, but the undercurrent of his thought dwelt on Hilda, and at every gayety of Katherine’s, his eyes sought her sister’s face; Hilda’s eyes were always fixed on Katherine, and she smiled a certain dumbly admiring smile. As he sat near her, he could see that the little black dress was very shabby. He could not have associated Hilda with real untidiness, and indeed the dress with its white linen cuffs and collar, its inevitable grace of severely simple outline, was neat to an almost painful degree. Hilda’s artistic proclivities perhaps showed themselves in shiny seams and careful darns and patches.