Low as his voice was, Rob, who was sitting just behind him, heard what he said, and then something else that he added in Spanish. Just a word, but it seemed to carry some potent appeal, for with a slight flush she rose. Leland made the opportunity he wished, by saying to Jack that one of the pleasures not to be missed was hearing Gay play the violin. Of course Jack immediately asked for the nocturne which he suggested, and Gay, always obliging, at once complied.
Under cover of the music Leland stepped into the hall, holding the portière aside with a bow for Lloyd to pass through. Rob's glance followed them across the hall, across the moonlighted porch to the avenue, where the locust shadows fell dense and black. Then he turned his attention resolutely to the music, listening as if in rapt enjoyment, but in reality never hearing a note.
The nocturne came to an end, and there was an encore and still another before Lloyd came back into the room. She was alone, and Rob, in one quick glance, saw that all the bright colour had left her face. She was gripping her little lace fan nervously, and her hazel eyes had deepened almost to black as they always did under the strain of unusual excitement or emotion. He was sure that she was very near tears, and with his usual impulse to shield her from all that was unpleasant, he moved his chair so that no one else saw her agitation and began talking volubly about the first thing he could think of. It happened to be Mary Ware's method of getting rid of an unwelcome guest by playing Fox and Stork, and as she listened to the lengthy story he purposely made of it, she had time to regain her composure before any one else came up.
Afterwards he heard her explaining to Mrs. Walton, "Mistah Harcourt had to leave early, and didn't want to break up the pah'ty by coming in to say good night."
When Rob heard next day that Leland was leaving the Valley at once for a trip to South America, he thought he understood the cause of Lloyd's agitation. It distressed her to have him go so far away. He had been positive for some time that there was some understanding between them. Now this confirmed his suspicions.
Lloyd was grieved over the parting, but not to the extent Rob imagined. Many a night after, she sat curled up on the window-seat in her room, looking down through the trees to the place where she had stood with Leland the night she bade him good-bye. She had not dreamed of such a stormy interview as that, she had not imagined any wooing could be so impassioned, reaching to such heights and depths. He hadn't paid the slightest attention when she tried to stop him, but had asserted triumphantly that he always got what he started out to win, and that this was a matter of life and death, and he'd win her love or die in the attempt. Sometimes, in thinking it over, she was afraid he would make his threats true, and then sometimes she thought with a quick indrawn breath, remembering how his wild protestations had thrilled her, that it would have been sweet to listen if she could only have been sure that it was right. He vowed he would come back when he could prove to her that he had won the accolade which she seemed to think was so essential, but she did not look for him. In her heart she said that the one real romance of her life was at an end.
Everything seemed to come to an end just then. Jack left the next morning, and before the close of the week Wardo was taken away. Ida was able to be moved to the old Bannon homestead near Anchorage. Although it was the one great thing Lloyd had wished for, she missed her little charge at every turn, and the days stretched out ahead of her long and empty.
The first of September Betty went away with Elise Walton under her wing, happy in the fact that she was to enter Freshman at Warwick Hall, where the older girls had had such glorious times. The next day the Harcourts closed the Cabin and went back to San Antonio. Gay spent her last night in the Valley at The Locusts, and there were more bed-time confidences before they fell asleep, long after midnight.
"Seems as if the end of the summah brings the end of everything," sighed Lloyd regretfully.