Neither did Rash perceive the significance of Barbara’s place at the tea-table when he entered about five o’clock, though she was quick to perceive the significance of his arrival. It was not, however, a 244 point to note outwardly, so that she lifted her hand above the tea-kettle, letting him bend over it, as she exclaimed:
“Welcome to our city! Do sit down and make yourself at home. Letty and I have been for a drive, and are all ready to enjoy a little male society.”
The easy tone helped Allerton over his embarrassment, first in finding the two women face to face, then in coming so unexpectedly face to face with them, and lastly in being caught by Barbara coming home at this unexpected hour. Knowing what the situation must mean to her he admired her the more for her sangfroid and social flexibility.
She took all the difficulties on herself. “Letty and I have been making friends, and are going to know each other awfully well, aren’t we?” A smile at Letty drew forth Letty’s smile, to Rashleigh’s satisfaction, and somewhat to his bewilderment. But Barbara, handing him a cup of tea, addressed him directly. “Who do you think is engaged? Guess.”
He guessed, and guessed wrong. He guessed a second time, and guessed wrong. There followed a conversation about people they knew, with regard to which Letty was altogether an outsider. Now and then she recognized great names which she had read in the papers, tossed back and forth without prefixes of Mr. or Miss, and often with pet diminutives. The whole represented a closed corporation of intimacies into which she could no more force her way than a worm into a billiard ball. Rash who was at first beguiled by the interchange of personalities began to experience a sense of discomfort that Letty should 245 be so discourteously left out; but Barbara knew that it was best for both to force the lesson home. Rash must be given to understand how lost he would be with any outsider as his companion; and Letty must be made to realize how hopelessly an outsider she would always be.
But no lesson should be urged to the quick at a single sitting, so that Barbara broke off suddenly to ask why he had come home. In the same way as she had given the order to William she spoke with the authority of one at liberty to ask the question. Not to give the real reason he said that it was to write a letter and change his clothes.
“And you’re going back to the Club?”
He replied that he was going to dine with a bachelor friend at his apartment.
“Then I’ll wait and drop you at the Club. You can go on from there afterwards. I’ve got the time.”
This too was said with an authority against which he felt himself unable to appeal.