"And you won't forgive me, Miss Maud?" from Mr. Welling to this energetically handsome young lady in her cloth suit of hunter's green. "Won't believe me that my motives, far from trying to win you over to my democracy, were unmixed and pure? Wouldn't see me when I called the other evening! Haven't answered my pleading note! I appeal to you, Mrs. Harrison. I've a question in ethics, moral, social and otherwise that Miss Amanthus once told me about. Or perhaps I'd better put it direct to Miss Maud. Will a lady say she's out when she's in? I'm coming around again to satisfy myself as to this, to-morrow night."
And meanwhile did Mr. Cannon—perish the thought!—approximate a wink at Adele as he approached her? At Adele who when she used to sportively skip rope did it with such painful conscientiousness one's heart ached to watch her? At Adele who constitutionally would be so embarrassed with a wink thus placed on her hands, one could not figure out the consequences? Certainly this Mr. Preston Cannon the naughty did something with an eyelid quite confidentially as he reached her. And who pray had told him of his recent double identity in connection with the Carter reception?
"The vagabond interloper is discovered in the cherished nephew," he was saying jocularly to Adele whose face was scarlet.
But even so, despite this effervescence of good spirits bestowed around, the younger ladies could not deceive themselves. The gentlemen were glad to find them here, of course, but incidentally, their own coming and their own ardor being for Mrs. Harrison!
For the third time Hetty appeared, now bringing in the tea and its accompaniments, which she put down on a table before Mrs. Harrison.
Whereupon the gentlemen rallied to their hostess again, rallied with a zest and heartiness that spelled homage. Culpepper at the table by her elbow, with the silver tongs suspended above the silver sugar bowl, waited her word to distribute the cubes to saucers. Culpepper—the blunt and self-avowed scorner of the lady's man!
Mr. Welling went about carrying cups. According to Maud's undertones to Selina, his facetious speeches as he distributed these merely sounded excessive.
"And silly," she added a moment later to the first indictment.
It was his speech calling attention to the gracious occupation of the hostess at the tea-table, that provoked this last comment.
"Juno, to human needs sweetly descent, pours tea," Mr. Welling diagramed it, as he handed Maud a cup of the brew.