She told him of her plans for the child and for her winter; Flood listened, saying little. It put him to shame that she should be doing everything for the two waifs, but her doing so only set her on a higher throne in the heaven of his longing. So intent was he on listening to every word, catching every intonation, watching every fleeting expression, that he was unaware of her not answering his question about Ogilvie.
At last Flood was driving his own car northward out of the city. A hope that fortune would continue further to smile upon him had prompted his asking a third man, who came up to speak to them, to join their party, so that he could release his chauffeur for the afternoon; and it was either an undefined wish to be rid of Cecilia for a few hours, or else a latent sense of gratitude, which prompted Rosamund to take her place beside him, smiling divinely—or so he fondly thought—at him, and roguishly at Cecilia and her attendant swains. Cecilia thoroughly enjoyed having two men to herself, especially as Marshall had been none too faithful since their parting in Virginia, and the situation offered an opportunity for discipline. The third man was benignly unaware of complications, and Rosamund openly laughed at Pendleton's expression of disgust.
They had passed out of the place side by side, while Flood went ahead to see to the car. "What's the matter with its little nose?" Rosamund laughed at Pendleton. "All out of joint?"
"You are perfectly disgusting, Rosamund," he replied in a most matter-of-fact tone, quite as if he were saying the sun was warm or the car was there. "Your manners have become contaminated, and your complexion has suffered, and you are a most disagreeable person. I hope you'll be stout before you are thirty! There!"
Rosamund's laugh was so frankly merry that Cecilia turned on a quick impulse of repression. Rosamund ought to know better than to laugh aloud in the door of a restaurant! But Flood was beside them, the other man might misunderstand a sisterly admonition, and Pendleton's raised eyebrows of disgust quite satisfied her. She allowed herself to be helped into the tonneau, happy in her own situation.
Flood knew better than to attempt small talk; he divined that he could better make himself felt by saying nothing than by saying the wrong thing. They passed swiftly northward out of the city, following upland roads that gave enchanting glimpses of the river and of nearer gardens; after an hour or so he brought his car to slow speed. They were beyond Sleepy Hollow, in woods of new growth, ferny depths, scarcely touched by sunlight, roadsides where pale asters set themselves like stars.
"Isn't it like Virginia?" Flood asked.
Rosamund only nodded; but presently she almost whispered, "I love it! Oh, I love it!"
"You are really going to spend the winter there?" Flood asked.
"Yes," she told him. "It somehow seems like home to me."