“I am perfectly certain, Miss Stuart,” replied the millionaire. “The lake is like a mill pond to-day. There is not a ripple on it.”
While they had been making their plans for the afternoon, a man had been leaning idly against the railing of the piazza. He now strolled quietly away, without having appeared to notice any one of them, or to have overheard any of their conversation.
But Barbara had observed him. She had an unquenchable curiosity concerning faces. And this man appeared indefinably interesting.
Was it the foreign cut of his dark suit, conspicuous among the crowds of white ones worn by most of the men at Palm Beach? Or was it his strong, clean-shaven face with its rather heavy bull-dog jaw, its square chin, and keen gray eyes, a little too narrow for Bab’s taste? Bab did not know, then. But she took in the man’s whole expression, and the adverse opinion she silently formed, at that time, she never had occasion to change.
As the party was about to separate for luncheon two women appeared in a nearby doorway and stood looking up and down the piazza.
“Oh, there are dear Marian and her mother!” cried Maud, hurrying over to greet her friends.
“Dear Mrs. De Lancey Smythe,” exclaimed Maud, with a defiant look toward her father, “I do so want you to go out with us in our launch this afternoon. Won’t you let me introduce some new friends to you, who are going to sail with us?”
Mr. Warren turned red. A look of disappointment, verging on anger crept into his good-natured brown eyes as his daughter deliberately defied him.
The De Lancey Smythes glanced toward the Stuart party, with bored indifference.
Mrs. De Lancey Smythe made some low-voiced remark to Maud who nodded her head slightly. Whereupon mother and daughter moved toward Miss Stuart with an air of haughty condescension.