"Nina?" asked her father.
"She comes back to-day," Harriet said. "Mrs. Carter is going to have her masseuse, so she won't be down. She asked you to remember that you are dining at the Jays' to-morrow. There's to be tennis at about four."
"Finals," he said, nodding. "Jim Kelsoe and one of the Irvins--"
"Judson Irwin," the girl supplied.
"Was it?" Richard Carter went out to his car apparently well pleased with himself and his life. Harriet started for the Hawkes' with a philosophic reflection or two as to the ephemeral quality of married quarrels.
She brought Nina back at noon, a garrulous and complacent Nina, who could pity the elder Hawkes as girls who "never had admirers." When they reached the driveway of Crownlands, Harriet recognized the car that was already there, and said to herself that Anthony Pope would join them for luncheon. But just as she and Nina were about to enter the cool, wide, dark doorway, Anthony himself passed them. He was almost running, and apparently did not see them. He ran down the shallow steps and sprang into his car, which scattered a spray of gravel as he jerked it madly about, and was gone before she and Nina had ended their look of surprise. Harriet detected a magnificent astonishment in Bottomley's mild elderly glance as well; she went slowly upstairs, with a dim foreboding far back in her heart.
In Nina's room were three flowers from Royal Blondin. Nina said hastily, and in rapture: "Water lilies!" but a ten-year-old memory told Harriet that they were lotus blooms. Another girl had had lotus blooms years ago; Harriet wondered if Royal always sent them to the women he admired, or rather, to the one whose favour was, for the moment, to his advantage.
Nina had no such thoughts. Radiantly and amazedly she turned to Harriet.
"Oh, Miss Harriet, look! They're from Mr. Blondin! Oh, I do think that is terribly nice of him. The idea! The IDEA! We were speaking of a poem called 'The Lotus Flower'. Did you ever? I think that is terribly decent of him, don't you? Shan't I write him? Would you? Hadn't I better write him right now? Will you help me? I do think that is terribly decent of him, don't you?"
And so on indefinitely. Harriet felt rather sorry for the gauche little creature who flung aside her hat and wrap, and sat biting her gold pen-handle, and spoiling sheet after sheet of paper. But there was protection in Nina's absorption, too; she was far too happy to know or care that Harriet felt somewhat worried, or to make any comment when they went down to lunch to find that Isabelle begged to be excused. They lunched alone with the old lady.