"If you're going to be, nasty, Cecilia, I won't tell you!"
Flood, who had not so far progressed as to become accustomed to such badinage, looked uneasily from Pendleton to their hostess; but Mrs. Maxwell seated herself beside him on the sofa, and calmly smiled.
Apparently she was going to ignore Pendleton for the moment. "I am always so glad when I can have my tea comfortably, without having to look after a roomful of people," she said. "You don't take it, I know, Mr. Flood, and Marshall can look out for himself. What do you think of this pink lustre cup, Mr. Flood? It's Rosamund's latest acquisition."
Flood had, after all, learned much in his three years. He bent forward to examine the cup, while Mrs. Maxwell turned its iridescent beauty towards the light.
"It is adorable," he said. "Is Miss Randall hunting for more to-day?"
Again his face had quickly become expressionless, but neither of the others were aware of it, and his question was doomed to remain unanswered.
Pendleton could no longer withhold his news. "Benny's just back from Virginia, Cecilia," he said. "He's bought Oakleigh."
"I think it's West Virginia, and it's just a little farm, you know," Flood said, weakly; but his geography was entirely immaterial to the others.
"Oakleigh? The Gore place?"
Flood still found it amazing that so many people knew so many other people; his lately made acquaintances in New York always seemed to know all about his lately made acquaintances in Florida or Virginia or the Berkshires, or, for that matter, in Europe. It was another of the things to which he had not yet become accustomed.