But there were no tears in her voice. “Yes, it was too late for Radcliffe. Father had again, you see, persuaded her to wait another year. But I went to see her the next morning and she had a plan. She had decided to get some kind of job—any kind—until she could begin earning her way through Radcliffe in the shortest time possible. In the end she meant to be a private secretary and I would go and live with her. Then I would begin going to Business School. We would both be independent and I needn’t live with Clare and Father. After Teresa had gone away in the taxi, they told me, you see, that they were going to be married as soon as the divorces went through,—so it was a very relieving idea, to live with Teresa and earn my own living. Teresa started in to make it come true right away. And it was coming true. She was all ready to graduate when—”
Petra broke off there, jumping up as if a bell had rung for her, and her first duty in life was to answer it. But it was only Dick Wilder, whistling to them from the road.
“Teresa was all ready to graduate and what happened? It doesn’t matter about Dick. Go on.” Lewis was impatient at the interruption.
“But they want us. Clare has sent him for us. She thinks I have kept you too long,” Petra whispered, and promised, quickly, under her breath, “I will tell you what happened the minute we are alone again. I want to tell you. I want your advice, Doctor Pryne. Things have happened.—But not now. Teresa is a secret here at Green Doors. From Dick Wilder too. From everybody.”
Dick had come around the side of the house. “Why didn’t you sing out?” he inquired, astonished at finding them there. “I thought you must have passed up our famous view and gone somewhere else, you two! Lowell has turned up at last. But whatever—”
Dick was silenced by a fresh astonishment. This was stranger than their hiding and not answering,—Petra crying. Of all things! And even Lewis was not quite himself. Well, Dick knew nothing to do about it other than to recommence talking faster than ever—which he did—and somehow hurry them back to the elm and Clare’s management. He began explaining, very swiftly and at some length, as they went, how little Sophia had refused to let anybody but her mother feed her her supper, and that that was why they—he and Clare—had been gone such an unconscionably long while themselves, and how, taking everything together, he was afraid that Petra’s father was feeling that they hadn’t any of them much realized that he had broken off his work half an hour ahead of the usual time to join them at tea, since nobody was anywhere near the tea table when he came up from his studio.
Petra may have heard something of Dick’s nervous chatter. Lewis heard nothing. Left to himself, he would never have been so docile under Dick’s high-handedness, of course. But Petra had shown such a passionate will to obedience from the instant of the summoning whistle that there was nothing else for Lewis but to seem docile too.
And here they were back on the lawn again, going down toward the group of chairs under the elm. Lowell Farwell had risen and was standing, waiting for them. He was more imposing even than the published portraits. His leonine mane of frosty curls, his elegant but wide shoulders, his height—and as they reached the shade and were near enough—his luminous black eyes under striking black brows, were the concrete and visible aspects of a personality to conjure with.
Chapter Six
