"Then there are Mrs. Van Bryck and Dosia—I am sure you have met them; and Hetty Bigelow, their cousin, twice removed, whom you have never met, if Cousin Janet could help it; and Hetty's brother, Lucius, who is something or other in the Forestry Service. Let me see; how many is that?"
"Eight," said Ballard, "counting the negligible Miss Bigelow and her tree-nursing brother."
"Good. I merely wanted to make sure you were paying attention. Last, but by no means least, there is Mr. Wingfield—the Mr. Wingfield, who writes plays."
Without ever having been suffered to declare himself Miss Elsa's lover, Ballard resented the saving of the playwright for the climax; also, he resented the respectful awe, real or assumed, with which his name was paraded.
"Let me remember," he said, with the frown reflective. "I believe it was Jack Forsyth the last time you confided in me. Is it Mr. Wingfield now?"
"Would you listen!" she laughed; but he made quite sure there was a blush to go with the laugh. "Do you expect me to tell you about it here and now?—with Mr. Wingfield sitting just three seats back of me, on the right?"
Ballard scowled, looked as directed, and took the measure of his latest rival.
Wingfield was at a table for four, with Mrs. Van Bryck, her daughter, and a shock-headed young man, whom Ballard took to be the football-playing Blacklock. In defiance of the clean-shaven custom of the moment, or, perhaps, because he was willing to individualise himself, the playwright wore a beard closely trimmed and pointed in the French manner; this, the quick-grasping eyes, and a certain vulpine showing of white teeth when he laughed, made Ballard liken him to an unnamed singer he had once heard in the part of Mephistopheles.
The overlooking glance necessarily included Wingfield's table companions: Mrs. Van Bryck's high-bred contours lost in adipose; Dosia's cool and placid prettiness—the passionless charms of unrelieved milk-whiteness of skin and masses of flaxen hair and baby-blue eyes; the Blacklock boy's square shoulders, heavy jaw, and rather fine eyes—which he kept resolutely in his plate for the better part of the time.
At the next table Ballard saw a young man with the brown of an out-door occupation richly colouring face and hands; an old one with the contradictory "H'm—ha!" written out large in every gesture; and two young women who looked as if they might be the sharers of the single Christian name. Miss Bigelow, the remaining member of the party, had apparently been lost in the dinner seating. At all events, Ballard did not identify her.