“Oh, I think so.”
“I see. But go on—about Sylvia.”
“Well, when they left Sylvia suddenly seemed so odd. She cried a good deal, and she was quite cranky—not a bit like herself. By this time we were all getting ready for the Panama trip. Margret thought that perhaps it was young Bart Montallen, who is a perfectly stunning fellow—in diplomacy——” Gabrielle elaborated.
“I remember him,” David said, briefly.
“But one day Sylvia broke down and cried for an hour,” Gabrielle said. “It was the day before we sailed, and we were at the Fairmont. It almost drove me wild—it had been a real responsibility, anyway,” the girl interrupted herself to remind him. “When we left here I was worried sick about Tom, we were all blue and dazed—and really I’d had it all on my mind until I got a little nervous.
“I coaxed Sylvia and petted her, and finally she told me that he had asked her to marry him—and there I made my first mistake,” Gay added, widening her eyes so innocently at David that he laughed aloud. “I said—trying to be sympathetic, you know—‘And of course, you wouldn’t!’ and she got rather red and looked straight at me and said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ I said, rather feebly, ‘Well, I didn’t know you cared about him,’ and she said, ‘I don’t. But I consider him in every way one of the finest men I ever knew!’ Of course I said I did, too.
“Then she began to cry again, and said that she was entirely alone in the world—all that,” Gay resumed, “and she said that any woman would be proud to marry Tom, but that she was afraid everyone would think she was influenced by the thought of his money.”
“And what did you say to that?” David asked, diverted.
Gabrielle gave him her gravely wise look, and the beautiful face, flushed with the warmth of the day and shaded by the blue hat, was so near that David lost the thread of her words for a few seconds, in sheer marvelling at her beauty.
“I said I did not think that that should be a consideration,” she answered. “I said that no one had thought that of you, when you were engaged to her,” she added, after a moment, and with a sudden smile.