Aurora hung in the wind a regretful moment.
“Oh, yes—he’d be in the way. I’ll leave him with you, Patty. Please don’t flirt any more than you can help.”
“My dear child,” said Patty, with solemn conviction, “since poor, foolish Freddy Winthrop, engaged men are taboo. Besides, to-night I have other plans. I would not flirt if you could animate the Apollo Belvedere. As Mortimer so chastely puts it, ‘me for the downy at 10 G. M.’ Monsieur will doubtless practice pool-shots or play a game of Napoleon.”
“Oh, yes,” said the Frenchman, with a calmness which scarcely concealed the note of derision.
But Aurora, after one long look in his direction, had vanished to don motor clothing, and when she came down, Mortimer Crabb with his quivering car awaited her in the drive. Patricia and the Baron waved them good-by from the porch and then went indoors to the subtle effulgence of the drawing room. Patricia walked to the mantel, turned her back to the fire and stretched her shapely arms along its shelf, facing her guest with level gaze and a smile which was something between a taunt and a caress. DeLaunay inhaled luxuriously the smoke of his cigarette and appraised his hostess through the half-closed eyes of the artist searching for a “motif.” She was puzzling—this woman—like the vagrant color in a landscape in the afternoon sunlight, which shimmered one moment in the sun and in the next was lost in shadowy mystery—not the mystery of the solemn hills, but the playful mystery of the woodland brook which laughs mockingly from secret places. Her eyes were laughing at him. He felt it, though none of the physical symbols of laughter were offered in evidence.
“I’m so sorry, Monsieur,” she began in French. “It is such a pity. There is no excuse for any one to have a sick aunt when the stage is set for sentiment. I had planned your evening so carefully, too——”
“You are the soul of kindness, Madame,” he said politely, still studying her.
“Yes,” she went on, slowly, “I think I am. But then I am chez moi, and charity, you know, begins at home.”
“I hope you will not call it charity. Charity they say is cold. And you, Madame, whatever you would seek to express, are not cold.”