V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

"Of course!--and be snowed under with invitations which would be odious to him, and probably roped in for something by Helen and Sue Louise Cheriton, say. He can have fun here, without its leading to anything."

She added, with perverse merriment: "At least he thinks he can, not knowing that two enterprising strangers are camping right across his little trail."

Mrs. Heth frowned slightly. She was a slim, rather small lady, and her fair face, at first sight, suggested an agreeable delicacy. To herself she acknowledged with pleasure that she was "spirituelle." To the observer, after a glance at her attractive upper face, the thick jaw and neck came as a surprise: so did the hands and feet. The feet, seen casually in a company, were apt to be taken for the belongings of some far stouter woman, sitting near. They were Mrs. Heth's, however; and she had also a small round birthmark on her left temple, which a deft arrangement of the hair almost concealed, and a small dark mustache, which was not so fortunately placed. She was sane and sound as to judgment, and her will had raised the House of Heth as by a steam derrick.

Miss Heth, gazing down at three or four hardy bathers, who splashed and shouted at the hotel float, said, laughing:

"Truly, mamma, what do you suppose the Cheritons would have given Willie for the splendid tip?"

Mrs. Heth's frown at her newspaper deepened; otherwise she made no response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years' experience had at last convinced her that her daughter's occasional mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle's, seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality that had been routed; at least the headstone over the grave of a good quality that maybe was only buried alive. But of these people, if such there were, Mrs. Heth was positively not one....

And Carlisle's next remark was: "What would you wear to-night, for the occasion?... Oh, there's a big motor-boat going by like the wind."

For though she might sometimes jeer aloud over processes, the daughter was known to be quite as serious at heart as her mother, over the great matters of life. Otherwise, look you, she might not have been at the Beach at all to-day. The fact was that she and mamma had not positively decided on this recuperative excursion (though they had practically decided) until after the arrival of Cousin Willie Kerr's notelet at breakfast: in which notelet Willie mentioned laconically that he and Mr. Canning were themselves going Beachward by the three o'clock train, and concluded his few lines with verbum sap, which is a Latin quotation.

Standing idly at the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr. Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud stranger within the gates--"house-guest," as the society column prefers it--for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed, sickened, and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had already met the too exclusive metropolitan--four days ago, by the lucky fluke of turning in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when she might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up. However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her fascinatingly, and retired to re-maroon himself in the rural villa of his kinsmen, the Allison Paynes, where he halted for a week or two on his health-seeking progress southward.

It looked like a parting forever, but wasn't, owing to that help which comes ever to those who help themselves....