“So that’s the way the land lies,” Stacey reflected, as he climbed the stairs. “Papa has been told, or, more likely, has found out. Decent of Mrs. Latimer, very!” Nevertheless, he was unhappy.
He knocked at the library door, and Marian called to him to enter.
She was curled up in her favorite arm-chair, and Ames Price was rising from a smaller chair near-by.
Marian gave Stacey a look of mischievous defiance. But he went over and shook hands with her so pleasantly and coolly that her eyes grew suddenly puzzled.
“Hello, Ames,” he said then, shaking his rival’s hand. “Haven’t seen you for years. How’ve you been?”
“First-class!” replied the other, eyeing Stacey doubtfully. “You look pretty fit.”
He was a tall, fair, loosely built man of forty, smooth-shaven and slightly bald. Stacey had known him in a casual way for years, but all that he really knew about him was that he had inherited money, had managed it well enough, was said to be a bit fast—but not excessively, and played an admirable game of golf. So far as Stacey or any one else was aware, there had been (except for golf) no passions in Ames’s life. Stacey felt a little sorry for him, that he should have been overwhelmed now by this one. Marian would make him uncomfortable. She would demand a great variety of emotions of him.
But, in spite of himself, Stacey also felt a hot jealousy. By Jove, Marian was beautiful!
“I suppose,” said Ames, with proper politeness, “that you must have had a pretty rough time in France. You were over the deuce of a while. I didn’t get across myself—division just about to sail when the Armistice came along.”
There was a touch of constraint in his tone. Stacey understood it at once. It was as though Ames had said: “You come back a hero. What chance have I got against you?”