“Just left. Her mother’s car came for her some time ago as she’s expected for lunch. She asked me to explain, as she thought you were still upstairs with Eustace.”
Gita placed her hands on the low sill of the window and swung herself out on to the grass. “Coming, Elsie?” She suppressed an impulse to say “Mrs. Brewster.” “Or will you go over and get your things?”
Elsie hesitated. For the first time the eyes of the two girls met in hostility. No invitation for luncheon came from Gita although it could not be far from one o’clock. Elsie was only half-beaten, however.
“I’ll telephone for a taxi, if I may,” she said. “I don’t feel up to a long walk, and I’d be likely to catch more cold in a trolley.”
She strolled with them in the garden until the taxi arrived, praying it would be late and Gita, in common decency, be compelled to ask her to remain for luncheon, when Topper announced it. She guessed that Polly would return at the earliest possible moment, but there was something about Gita that filled her with misgivings. Even her hair looked wicked. It almost stood up straight. Two hours, at least!
But the taxi arrived in less than fifteen minutes. The absence of traffic laws in Atlantic City—or of enforcement—was conducive to promptness. She offered to drive her brother home. He preferred a walk later. There was no doubt about his invitation! Elsie went off in her dingy cab alone.
CHAPTER XX
If one were to tabulate truisms no doubt the prickly wall, towering to the ether, that surrounds the ego, no matter how close its human relationships, would be first on the list. Polly had made up her mind to marry Geoffrey Pelham and felt no misgivings, for life had given her confidence in herself and her power to charm. For five years men had admired, loved, pursued her, and when she wanted a thing it was hers; why not? Nor was there a rival in the field. If Geoffrey had been captivated by Gita for a time it was quite patent he had given her up as a bad job. Who wouldn’t? Both her mother and Elsie had made a mistake. She hadn’t been asleep this last week, she had kept a sharp eye on Gita, missing no change of expression nor inflection. Gita had prowled about the house for the most part, looking sullen and anxious. Pelham might have been an automaton for all the effect he had on her. Gita was not in love with him, probably never would be in love with any man, unless remorse drove her back to Eustace; who would be a greater fool than she took him to be if he didn’t make the most of his helpless dependence and the great wrong she had done him. And Geoffrey was as indifferent to Gita as she to him. Whether he had discovered he was in love with one Mary Endicott Pleyden she was not yet sure; but that he lingered longer and longer at the manor after his visits to Eustace were concluded, and that he sought her as a matter of course, and looked care-free and often exhilarated in her society, was as plain as the nose on her face. And they would be together in intimate association, for weeks. Her brow was smooth, the corners of her mouth curled upward.
Gita had given Geoffrey to Polly with a grand gesture, convinced on her part that she alone was the obstacle to the happiness of her friend. In her brief interviews with her wounded husband’s surgeon the conversation had been strictly technical. Nor had his cool impersonal gaze wavered for a second, nor followed her. It was more likely to follow the enchanting Miss Pleyden. He had come to his senses. Odd if he hadn’t.
But they knew even less of what was going on in Geoffrey’s mind than they did of each other. Nor had he the remotest idea of what either of them was up to. If he had guessed that they were calmly, more or less, arranging his destiny for him he would have resented it for a moment and then laughed.