They were in the shade, and the fresh sweet wind, heavy with the scent of growing corn and wheat, swept steadily over the court, relieving it from heat, and Victor clean forgot his worriments. This girlish figure filled his eyes with pictures of unforgetable grace and charm. The swing of her skirts as she leaped for the ball, the free sweep of her arm (she had been well instructed), and the lithe bending of her waist brought the lover's sweet unease. When they came to the net now and again, he studied her fine figure with frank admiration. "You are a corker!" was his boyish word of praise. "I don't go up against many men who play the game as well as you do. Your 'form' is a whole lot better than mine. I am a bit lucky, I admit. You see, I studied baseball pitching, and I know the action of a whirling sphere. I curve the ball—make it 'break,' as the English say. I can make it do all kinds of 'stunts.'"
"I see you can, and I'll thank you not to try any new ones," she protested. "Can you ride a horse?"
His face fell a bit. "There I am a 'mutt,'" he confessed. "I never was on a horse except the wooden one in the Gym."
"I'm glad I can beat you at something," she said, with exultant cruelty. "I know you can row."
"Shall we try another set?" he asked.
"Not to-day, thank you. My self-respect will not stand another such drubbing. I'm going in for a cold plunge. After that you may read to me on the porch."
"I'll be there with the largest tome in the library," he replied.
Mrs. Joyce stopped him as he was going up-stairs to his room. "Victor, don't worry about me. While it looks as though I have lost a good deal of money through Pettus, I am by no means bankrupt. I am just about where I was when I met your mother. She has not enriched me—I mean The Voices have not—neither have they impoverished me. It's just the same with Leo. She's almost exactly where she was when she came East. It would seem as if they had been playing with us just to show us how unsubstantial earthly possessions are."
There was a certain comfort in this explanation, and yet the fact that her losses had not eaten in upon her original capital did not remove the essential charge of dishonesty which the man Aiken had brought against the ghostly advisers. Florence and Thomas Aiken could not afford to be so lenient. They were disinherited, cheated of their rightful legacy, by the lying spirits.
He was anxious, also, to know just how deeply Leo was involved in the People's Bank; and when she came down to the porch he led her to a distant chair beside a hammock on the eastern side of the house, and there, with a book in his hand, opened his interrogations.