Neither she, nor any of the members of the house party, stopped to ask a single question. They had swallowed the story of Beatrix and Sutherland York whole. They now swallowed the news of the secret marriage with the same appetite. It is the human way. The details mattered nothing. The motive which led to so unusual a proceeding as a secret marriage, the place and date of the ceremony, mattered nothing. They had all believed without corroboration that Beatrix had fallen a victim to the picturesque attractions of the much-advertised portrait painter. In the same way they accepted the new and much more exciting fact and hastened to congratulate their hostess and the two young people concerned.
Beatrix found herself, as she knew that she would, the heroine of the family. Her mother smiled upon her during the remainder of the day and frequently placed her usually unemotional hand on her daughter's shoulder and said: "My dear, dear child," or "dear Beatrix."
Her father,—that rather pathetic figure, a man who had never done a stroke of work since his birth—whose immense wealth had utterly deprived him of the initiative to do things, conquer things or achieve things, and who found himself in late middle-age without having discovered the master-secret of life—how to live,—came out of his almost settled melancholia for the time being and behaved at dinner like any ordinary healthy, normal man, laughing frequently and cracking little jokes with his guests.. Whenever he caught his daughter's eyes he gave her the most tender and appreciative smile, and came so far out of his shell as to raise his glass to Franklin, who responded with a very queer smile.
As for Aunt Honoria,—a past-mistress in the art of graciousness,—so proud and happy was she that her pet ambition of a union between her family and Franklin's had been fulfilled, that she readily forgave the unconventional behavior of the two young people, the lack of a wonderful wedding and a great society function, and beamed upon them both. She caught Beatrix as she was about to dash upstairs to change for dinner and folded her arms about the girl, whose eyes danced with the spirit of mischief and the sheer fun of it all. "My darling," she said, "you've made me very happy. No wonder you came home to-day defiant and with a high head. You held a royal flush. You've won the love of a man, my dear. Honor and respect it, and may God bless you!"
Upstairs in her room, whose windows gave a view of the Sound that was indescribably charming, Beatrix had a brief, almost breathless talk with Mrs. Lester Keene, to whom the story of the secret marriage had come as a frightful shock. This amiable, weak woman, hide-bound in her ideas of right and wrong, met her with nerves unstrung, and incoherent in her terror of being implicated in what she knew to be a lie.
But Beatrix waved her stammering reproaches aside. "Brownie," she cried, at the top of her form, "whatever happens you're safe, so don't worry. I've jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, but I'm an excellent jumper and I believe in luck. I dare not think where the next spring will land me, so I'm not going to think. Sufficient unto the day, you know, and Franklin is a sportsman. All I know is that at this moment I'm the little pet of all the world; that I had the unspeakable delight of turning the tables on my people and that I feel as beautiful as I look,—and that's saying a good deal. Now run away and tell Helene to come and dress me as befits a young wife still on her honeymoon." She gave the elderly, disturbed lady a kiss on both her cheeks, shooed her out of the room and broke into song.
Only once during dinner did she permit herself to meet Franklin's eyes and then, for the first time since she had sprung her suddenly conceived surprise upon her irate family, she received a momentary shock which ran through her body like that of electricity, leaving her tingling and frightened. But with her abounding capacity for recovery and her all-conquering belief in herself and her gift for getting out of scrapes she shook the feeling off and went through the rest of the evening in the highest spirits. No one had ever seen her looking so brilliantly or so exquisitely beautiful. Her eyes shone like stars, her dimples came and went and came again. She was the life of the house, moving from group to group like a young Helen—a wood nymph—the very spirit of joy and laughter. Not for the ninety-ninth part of a second did she permit herself to pull up and wonder what she had done; where her impetuous, hare-brained, autocratic desire for self-preservation might lead. Never for an instant, or the fraction of an instant, did she give a thought to the appalling difficult position into which her spur-of-the-moment scheme had placed Franklin. What she had done she had done, and there, for the time being, was the end of it. Somehow or other everything would come right, as it always did. Why else was she who she was? Why else had she been led to believe that the earth, the sun and the moon were hers. It was all the natural correlation of her training since she had been brought into the world.
Franklin allowed Beatrix to avoid a talk with him until many of the guests had gone to bed. Between the moment when she had slipped her arm through his and made that urgent and almost childlike appeal which had carried him off his feet and left him without caution and sanity, and the one when he stalked across the pompous hall to her side and drew her into an alcove, he had done some peculiar thinking. He was a straight-going, honest fellow, who, like Beatrix, had gone through life having his own way. No living soul had ever before coerced him from the path that he had chosen. He was in no sense of the word a lady's man, and he had no idea of marrying and settling down until he had had enough of hunting and camping.
He had watched Beatrix closely. He had seen her reinstated into the family favor, taking the congratulations that were poured upon her by them and their friends with a charming dignity that took his breath away. He guessed, of course, that he had been "used" by Beatrix to save herself from punishment, because he had been obliged to overhear the last part of the family attack. But he expected from moment to moment that she would either permit him to deny the story of the secret marriage or do so herself. It was inconceivable to him that this lie was to be allowed to get them both deeper and deeper into a most deplorable tangle.
He was blazing with anger when at last he found her alone for a moment, and he made no attempt to hide it. "I want a word with you," he said shortly.