“You’re monopolising me scandalously,” she protested. “Go away,” and she turned immediately to the dapper little marquis, who was enduring the most difficult evening of his life. Gail was so thoroughly adapted to a grand affair, one in which he could avow universes; and the Miss Van Ploon was so exacting.
The study door was open when Houston Van Ploon sedately escorted Mrs. Davies and Gail into the library, one of those rooms which appoint themselves the instinctive lounging places of all family intimates. Gail turned up her big eyes in sparkling acknowledgment as the punctilious Van Ploon took her cloak, and, at that moment, as she stood gracefully poised, she caught the gaze of the Reverend Smith Boyd fixed on her with such infinite longing that it distressed her. She did not want him to suffer.
Uncle Jim strode out with a hearty greeting, and, at the sound of the voices of no one but Gail and Mrs. Davies and Houston Van Ploon, old “Daddy” Manning appeared in the doorway, followed by the rector.
“The sweetest flower that blows in any dale,” quoted “Daddy” Manning, patting Gail’s hand affectionately.
The rector stood by, waiting to greet her, after Manning had monopolised her a selfish moment, and the newly aroused eye of colour in him seized upon the gold and blue and red of her straight Egyptian costume, and recognised in them a part of her endless variety. The black on her lashes. He was close enough to see that; and he marvelled at himself that he could not disapprove.
Gail was most uncomfortably aware of him in this nearness; but she turned to him with a frank smile of friendship.
“This looks like a conspiracy,” she commented, glancing towards the study, which was thick with smoke.
“It’s an offensively innocent one,” returned Manning, giving the rector but small chance. “We’re discussing the plans for the new Vedder Court tenements.”
“Oh!” observed Gail, and radiated a distinct chill, whereupon the Reverend Smith Boyd, divesting himself of some courteous compliment, exchanged inane adieus with Mrs. Davies and young Van Ploon, and took his committee back into the study.
Mrs. Davies remained but a moment or so. She even seemed eager to retire, and as she left the library, she cast a hopeful backward glance at the dancing-eyed Gail and the correct young Van Ploon, who, with his Dutch complexion and his blonde English moustache and his stalwart American body, to say nothing of his being a Van Ploon, represented to her the ideal of masculine perfection. He was an eligible who never did anything a second too early or a second too late, or deviated by one syllable from the exact things he should say.