"Freely," said Minot. "And I want to apologize for my suspicions of you, Lord Harrowby."
"Thanks, old chap."
"I never doubted you would come—after I saw Miss Meyrick."
"She is a ripper, isn't she?" said Harrowby enthusiastically.
Martin Wall shot a quick, almost hostile glance at Minot.
"You've noticed that yourself, haven't you?" he said in Minot's ear.
At which point the Meyrick family arrived, and they all went in to dinner.
That function could hardly be described as hilarious. Aunt Mary fluttered and gasped in her triumph, and spoke often of her horror of the new. The recent admission of automobiles to the sacred precincts of Bar Harbor seemed to be the great and disturbing fact in life for her. Spencer Meyrick said little; his thoughts were far away. The rush and scramble of a business office, the click of typewriters, the excitement of the dollar chase—these things had been his life. Deprived of them, like many another exile in the South, he moved in a dim world of unrealities and wished that he were home. Minot, too, had little to say. On Martin Wall fell the burden of entertainment, and he bore it as one trained for the work. Blithely he gossiped of queer corners that had known him and amid the flow of his oratory the dinner progressed.
It was after dinner, when they all stood together in the lobby a moment before separating, that Mr. Henry Trimmer made good his promise out of a clear sky.
Cynthia Meyrick stood facing the others, talking brightly, when suddenly her face paled and the flippant words died on her lips. They all turned instantly.