At the Royston girls’ suggestion, they put on evening wraps and repaired to the terrace—except the two elder ladies, who preferred the more tempered atmosphere of the salon. Mrs. Copley delegated her husband and Sybert to act as chaperons—a position which Sybert accepted with a bow, to the accompaniment of a slightly puzzled smile on Eleanor’s part. She could not exactly make out the gentleman’s footing in the household. They seated themselves in a group about the balustrade, with the exception of Eleanor and Sybert, who strolled back and forth the length of the flagging. Eleanor was doing her best to-night, and her best was very good; she appeared to have wakened a spark in even his indifference. Marcia, with her eyes on the two, thought again how well they went together, and M. Benoit was a second time on the verge of calling her distraite.
The two strollers after a time joined the group, Eleanor humming under her breath a little French chanson that had been going the rounds of the Paris cafés that spring.
‘Oh, sing something we all know,’ said Margaret, and with a laughing curtesy toward Sybert she struck into ‘Fair Harvard.’ The other girls joined her. Their voices, rising high and clear, filled the night with the swinging melody. It seemed strangely out of place there, in the midst of the Sabine hills, with the old villa behind them and the Roman Campagna at their feet. As their voices died away Sybert laughed softly.
‘I swear I’d forgotten it!’
Margaret shook her head in mock reproof. ‘Forgotten it!’ she cried. ‘A man ought to be ashamed to acknowledge it if he had forgotten his Alma Mater song. It’s like forgetting his country.’
‘I suspect,’ said Eleanor, ‘that it’s time for you to go back to America and be naturalized, Mr. Sybert.’
‘Oh, well, Miss Royston,’ he objected, ‘I suppose in time one outgrows his college, just as one outgrows his kindergarten.’
‘And his country,’ Marcia added, as much for Paul Dessart’s benefit as for his own.
Margaret, searching for diversion, presently suggested that they visit the ghost. Marcia objected that the ghost was visible only during the full moon, but the objection was overruled. There was some moon at least, and a wild night like this, with flying clouds and waving branches, was just the time for a ghost to think of his sins. Mr. Copley, in the office of chaperon, remonstrated that the grass would be damp; but there were rubbers, he was told. Marcia acquiesced in the expedition without any marked enthusiasm; she foresaw a possible tête-à-tête with Paul Dessart. As they set out, however, she found herself walking beside M. Benoit, with Paul contentedly strolling on ahead at the side of his younger cousin, while Eleanor and the two chaperons brought up the rear. As they came to the end of the laurel path and approached the region of the ruins, Margaret paused with her finger on her lips and in a conspiratorial whisper impressed silence on the group. They laughingly fell into the spirit of the play, and the whole party stole along with the elaborate caution of ten-year-old boys ambuscading Indians.