Was he looking for her? She could not tell. Presently he walked toward the conservatory, and a moment later Eve Glenn came tripping toward her.
“Oh, here you are!” she cried, flinging her arms about her in regular school-girl abandon, and kissing the cold, proud mouth, that deigned no answering caress. “Rex has been looking for you everywhere, and at last commissioned me to find you and say he wants to speak to you. He is out on the terrace.”
How she longed to ask if Rex’s face was smiling or stern, but she dared not.
“Where did you say Rex was, Miss Glenn?”
“I said he was out on the terrace; but don’t call me Miss Glenn, for pity’s sake––it sounds so freezingly cold. Won’t you please call me Eve,” cried the impetuous girl––“simply plain Eve? That has a more friendly sound, you know.”
Another girl less proud than the haughty heiress would have kissed Eve’s pretty, piquant, upturned, roguish face.
“What did Rex have to say to her?” she asked herself, in growing dread.
The last hope seemed withering in her proud, passionate heart. She rose haughtily, and walked with the dignity of a queen through the long drawing-room toward the terrace. Her heart almost stopped beating as she caught sight of Rex leaning so gracefully against the trunk of an old gnarled oak tree, smoking a cigar. That certainly did not look as if he meant to greet her with a kiss.
She went forward hesitatingly––a world of anxiety and suspense on her face––to know her fate. The color surged over her face, then receded from it again, as she looked at him with a smile––a smile that was more pitiful than a sigh.