She detached her eyes from Harrison’s long enough to wave her slim hand, and received in return a beaming smile from Anne, across the balustrade, and a wave of the hand most cordial. Harrison remained in his trance, incapable of making or receiving any salutation, and Hobart Simms, looking after the car as it passed northward, did not see how bleak and blank Anne looked as she sank back in her chair.
He laughed. “Poor old Harry Crisp!” he said. “He didn’t even see us, so it’s all up with him. It’s too bad: he might have got something out of life; but it’s all over now.”
“I don’t follow you, I’m afraid,” Anne said, coldly, in a tired voice.
“No? Well, in the first place, he’s working for his father. That’s bad, but it can be got over. What’s really fatal, he’s going to marry that Miss Ealing. I’ve heard it rumoured, and after looking at ’em just now I see it’s true. That’s something he can’t get over.”
“Can’t he?” Anne’s tired voice was a little tremulous. “You mean he’ll always be in love with her? I should think that rather desirable if they’re to marry.”
“Oh, he’ll get over that,” Hobart said, briskly. “I mean he’ll never get over his having married Miss Ealing.”
Anne looked puzzled; but she did not try to make him be more explicit. Instead, she asked indifferently, “Don’t you call her ‘Sallie,’ Hobart? I thought all the men called her ‘Sallie’ by this time. She’s been here several weeks.”
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “I haven’t called her anything, in fact.”
“What? Didn’t she take the trouble to fascinate you, Hobart?”
He laughed. “You’d hardly think she would, but she did—a little. I don’t suppose you could say she went out of her way to do it, or took any trouble, exactly; but she did invite me to join, as it were.”