“I mean that you may go to the devil,” I retorted, and reached for the door knob.
But before my fingers touched it there was the sound of laughter and voices in the hall. The knob was turned from without. I stepped back and to one side involuntarily, as the door opened and into the library came, not the butler, but a young lady, a girl in an automobile coat and bonnet. And, following her, a young man.
“Father,” said the young lady, “Johnson says you've bought that horrid road. I'm so glad! When did you do it?”
“Congratulations, Mr. Colton,” said the young man. “We just passed a cart full of something—seaweed, I believe it was—as we came along with the car. Oscar had to slow down to squeeze by, and we certainly were swept by ocean breezes. By Jove! I can smell them yet. I—”
The young lady interrupted him.
“Hush, Victor,” she said. “I beg your pardon, Father. I thought you were alone. Victor, we're intruding.”
The open door had partially screened me from the newcomers. But Colton, red and wrathful, had not ceased to glare in my direction and she, following his gaze, saw me. She did not recognize me, I think—probably I had not made sufficient impression upon her mind even for casual remembrance—but I recognized her. She was the girl with the dark eyes, whose look of contemptuous indifference had so withered my self-esteem. And her companion was the young chap who, from the tonneau of the automobile that morning, had inquired the way to Bayport.
The young man turned lazily. “Are we?” he said. “I—What! Why, Mabel, it's the humorist!”
Then she recognized me. I could feel the blood climbing from my toes to the roots of my hair. I was too astonished and chagrined to speak or even move, though I wanted to move very much indeed. She looked at me and I at her. Then she turned coldly away.
“Come, Victor,” she said.