XI
To the host, the luncheon party at the Arlington had not once presented itself as a jolly gathering of any set, young or old. He had conceived it as a duty, and an expensive one; he approached it, truth to tell, with a certain secret complacence as to Mary Wing uppermost in his mind; and he left it (after Mary's private talk with him) with chastened reflections and a group of new reactions on the subject of Egoettes.
For two weeks, Charles had been very busy in the Studio. The luncheon stood as his first whirl in Society since Angela Flower's bridge-party. Donald Manford, departing to seek his biggest commission, seemed to need a friendly send-off. Miss Carson seemed to be indicated as the logical co-sharer of the same. At the Redmantle Club, as he had never forgotten, Charles had taken Donald bodily away from the firm beautiful girl Mary had selected to be his wife. Now, as it were, he was handing Donald back to her again—loyal Moderns all. Beyond the match-making, however, this function was intended to cheer up Mary, and to indicate to the Public that Charles Garrott was her supporter in adversity as in success. Thus, from every point of view, the "demoted" school-teacher was the real guest of honor, and the host, when not fomenting conversation of a matrimonial nature between the two young persons on his right, found a peculiar pleasure in conversing with her. Indeed, he could hardly look at Mary to-day without a lurking smile.
Later, as noted, Charles sobered. What Mary lingered to tell him, "for his own good," was that Flora Trevenna had gone away. As it was the one thing he had supposed Miss Trevenna incapable of doing, he was proportionately taken by surprise. But, for a moment, he saw in the tidings only that the great obstacle in his and Mary's way back to the High School, their common Old Man of the Sea, had been amazingly removed.
Endeavoring to conceal his immense relief, he said: "Gone away! Why, where'd she go to?"
Mary's reply was meant to shake him, and it did.
"Oh—anywhere! She went, not because she had anywhere to go, but just because she wouldn't stay here."
"But—I don't understand you! I thought this was where she wanted to stay."
"More than anything else in the world. And that was why she went—don't you see? She went because of her mother and father and sisters—whom you supposed she never gave a thought to. She went because of Mysinger and me."