Thus giving himself over to the bitterness—and the self-glorification—of the afterthought, Tregarvon wore out the day, deferring to Rucker as boss of the repairing job, and trying not to speculate too pointedly upon the doings of the absent Carfax. That the golden youth was once more a drop-in guest at the near-by school was not to be doubted; and the caviller at an unkind fate steeled himself against another disloyalty—a temptation to rail at the New Yorker for making such unseemly haste. The ill-natured thought would have likened Carfax’s haste to that which prompts the heir-at-law to open and read the will while the testator is as yet merely in the throes of the death-agony—only Tregarvon would not yield to the temptation.
If the murmurer against fate could have seen beyond the half-mile of forest which intervened between the old slave burying-ground and Highmount, he would have concluded sorrowfully that Carfax’s haste was well on the way to its reward. Miss Richardia’s duty hours in the afternoon were short, and at three o’clock she was free to join the golden one, who, as Tregarvon’s prefiguring had assumed, had been Mrs. Caswell’s luncheon guest, and was now making himself at home on the broad veranda of the administration building. For a time the talk rambled through Boston byways and was reminiscent of Miss Richardia’s sojourn as a Conservatory student and of Carfax’s quickly abandoned attempt to take a postgraduate course in the School of Naval Architecture.
“You see, I didn’t have the spur,” was Carfax’s excuse for the abandoned attempt. Then, in an apparent burst of enthusiasm: “Vance is the lucky fellow! He is obliged to work. He thinks it is pretty hard lines, but he doesn’t know how jolly good it is for his soul. It is precisely what he is needing, don’t you think?”
“Work? yes; but the many disappointments: are they also good for the soul?”
Carfax’s smile was entirely amiable. “In due proportion, they are, I should say. Vance has been like a bit of soft steel, needing the forge fire and the tempering brine bath. I presume you know that he is engaged to be married?”
Miss Richardia’s smile was of the sort that no mere man may interpret.
“I think he has told me all there was to tell. Are you acquainted with Miss Wardwell?”
“Very well acquainted, indeed. She is all that any man could ask—and more,” said Carfax, with more warmth than he usually permitted himself. “Last summer she was a member of a Lake Placid outing-party in which I had the good fortune also to be included. We became quite chummy. She swims, you know.”
Again Miss Birrell’s smile was a charming little mask of impenetrability.
“These athletic young women!” she sighed. “It is their day.”