“She?” said Sue, under her breath. “Who?”
Mr. Courtney Graves stood up and pointed, first to the fireplace, then to a writing-desk, last of all to a panel between two bookcases. Above the fireplace, on the carved mantel, was the full-length portrait of a beautiful girl—a dark, imperious, queenly girl in ball dress. On the writing-desk, in delicate frames of hand-wrought silver, were two other photographs of the same girl. One of these showed her in a trailing carriage-coat, with furs; the other was a lake scene, and she was seated in a drifting boat, with a ruffled parasol shading her lovely face. In the panel between the bookcase was a fourth picture of the selfsame subject—an etching done with great skill and effectiveness. The dark girl, gowned in clinging white, was shown against a massed background. A flowered hat rested upon her poised head; one hand was outstretched to feed a fawn.
“He has it!” announced Mr. Graves portentously; “he’s another added to the epidemic. Sue, Phil Rawson’s in love with Genevieve Unger.” Whereupon he sank between his companions.
Sue did not speak, but sat regarding them from the depths of her chair.
“It’s a particularly bad case,” said Mr. Hammond, “and we fear the worst.”
“The worst?” questioned Sue in a low voice.
“You know Miss Unger. Is she going to let Hillcrest slip through her fingers? Hang these visiting girls, anyhow! They always create trouble.”
Sue put up a gloved hand quickly. “Please don’t criticise Genevieve to me, Len,” she said. “She’s my friend.”
“Just the same, you know what she’ll do,” persisted Mr. Hammond. “She’ll keep Phil dangling as long as she can—perhaps one month, perhaps two—then she’ll haughtily accept him. Meanwhile, what’ll he be good for? Polo? And the Hadbury game comes off in just ten days. We’ll lose it without him.” He nursed a knee disconsolately.
“We thought,” began Mr. Graves, taking up the matter where Mr. Hammond had left off, “that you might be able to shorten the period of agony—the dangling period, I mean. If Miss Unger imagined there was the least danger that she’d lose him, why, she’d grab him.”