After all, there was wisdom in what she said. She may even have been right, as she so often was in her shrewish intuition. Certainly they never learned more of this scion of the Ravenal family than the meagre information gleaned from the chronicles of the village church and graveyard.
Grudgingly, protestingly, she allowed the two to converse genteelly between the hours of five and six, after dinner. But no oriental princess was ever more heavily chaperoned than was Magnolia during these prim meetings. For a month, then, they met on the port side of the upper deck, forward. Their chairs were spaced well apart. On the starboard side, twenty-five feet away, sat Parthy in her chair, grim, watchful; radiating opposition.
Magnolia, feeling the gimlet eye boring her spine, would sit bolt upright, her long nervous fingers tightly interwoven, her ankles neatly crossed, the pleats and flounces of her skirts spread sedately enough yet seeming to vibrate with an electric force that gave them the effect of standing upright, a-quiver, like a kitten’s fur when she is agitated.
He sat, one arm negligently over the back of his chair, facing the girl. His knees were crossed. He seemed at ease, relaxed. Yet a slim foot in its well-made boot swung gently to and fro. And when Parthy made one of her sudden moves, as was her jerky habit, or when she coughed raspingly by way of emphasizing her presence, he could be felt, rather than seen, to tighten in all his nerves and muscles, and the idly swinging foot took a clonic leap.
The words they spoke with their lips and the words they spoke with their eyes were absurdly at variance.
“Have you really been in Paris, Mr. Ravenal! How I should love to see it!” (How handsome you are, sitting there like that. I really don’t care anything about Paris. I only care about you.)
“No doubt you will, some day, Miss Magnolia.” (You darling! How I should like to take you there. How I should like to take you in my arms.)
“Oh, I’ve never even seen Chicago. Only these river towns.” (I love the way your hair grows away from your temples in that clean line. I want to put my finger on it, and stroke it. My dear.)
“A sordid kind of city. Crude. Though it has some pleasant aspects. New York——” (What do I care if that old tabby is sitting there! What’s to prevent me from getting up and kissing you a long long while on your lovely pomegranate mouth.)
Lowering, inflexible, sat Parthy. “She’ll soon enough tire of that sort of popinjay talk,” she told herself. She saw the bland and almost vacuous expression on the countenance of the young man, and being ignorant of the fact that he was famous from St. Louis to Chicago for his perfect poker face, was equally ignorant of the tides that were seething and roaring within him now.