The words came like a thunder-clap, though Miss Gwendoline’s voice was honey sweet. Bob raised a tragic head. That monster, Truth!
“No,” he said.
An instant Miss Gwendoline looked at him, the violet eyes incredulous, amused. Then a slight line appeared on her beautiful forehead and her red lips parted a little as if she were going to say something, but didn’t. Instead, they closed tight, the way rosebuds shut when the night is unusually frosty. Her eyes became hard like diamonds.
“How charmingly frank!” she said. Then she drew up the reins and trailed the tip of the whip caressingly along the back of her spirited cob. It sprang forward. “Look out for the sun, Mr. Bennett,” she called back as they dashed away. “It’s rather hot to-day.”
Bob stood and stared after her. What did she mean about the sun? Did she think he had a touch of sunstroke, or brain-fever? It was an inauspicious beginning, indeed. If he had only known what next was coming!
CHAPTER IV—A CHAT ON THE LINKS
At the top of the hill, instead of following the winding road, Bob started leisurely across the rolling green toward the big house whose roof could be discerned in the distance above the trees. The day was charming, but he was distinctly out of tune. There was a frown on his brow. Fate had gone too far. He half-clenched his fists, for he was in a fighting mood and wanted to retaliate—but how? At the edge of some bushes he came upon a lady—no less a personage than the better-half of the commodore, himself.
She was fair, fat and forty, or a little more. She was fooling with a white ball, or rather it was fooling with her, for she didn’t seem to like the place where it lay. She surveyed it from this side and then from that. To the casual observer it looked just the same from whichever point you viewed it. Once or twice the lady, evidently no expert, raised her arm and then lowered it. But apparently, at last, she made up her mind. She was just about to hit the little ball, though whether to top or slice it will never be known, when Bob stepped up from behind the bushes.
“Oh, Mr. Bennett!” He had obviously startled her.
“The same,” said Bob gloomily.