"We'll see," said Mrs. Carew darkly. She grabbed up the tea-tray and made for the door. "To-morrow I shall tell her it is not to happen again."
"All right, you tell her," her husband muttered behind her retreating back. "Can't think, though, why you don't leave the girls alone. However they start it always ends that way. You and I have seen quite a number take to the streets, and you don't do much to prevent them short of grumbling at them."
"They shan't do it in my house," reiterated Mrs. Carew; she stumped in dignified protest from the room, and upstairs to the offender's attic.
The first guest had already arrived, so Mrs. Carew could not voice her disapproval; she expressed it, however, in a glare which she directed towards him, and the noise with which she dumped down the tea-tray. The room was full of flowers, which did not add to her approval; she detected in them a sure sign of immorality. Great, beautiful red roses, nodding from every vase, filling the air with their rather heavy scent. The visitor also inspired her with a sense of distrust. He looked what Mrs. Carew described as "a man about town." She had been fond of Joan; behind her anger lay a small hurt sense of pity; she was too nice a young lady to go the way of the others.
She opened the door to Dick a little later with a sour face, and she did not even trouble to take him upstairs.
"Miss Rutherford is high up as you can get"—she jerked her thumb upwards—"it's the only door on the landing, you can't mistake it."
With that she left him, and Dick found his own way upstairs. He had stayed away all day till the exact hour he had named, with some difficulty, but with a punctilious sense of doing right. Joan had not answered his letter and he looked upon her silence as an admission that she loved him, but there were a great many things between them that would have to be talked over first coldly and sensibly. He had thought the matter out and he had decided that he would not leave it all to her, to tell or not to tell as she thought best, which had been his first idea. He would help her by telling her that he had always known, and that it made no difference. He wanted to make her confession as easy as possible.
It was not until after he had knocked that he realized with a shock of disappointment that Joan was not alone. He could hear her talking to somebody, then she moved across the room and pulled the door open. He saw only her first of all, his eyes sought hers and stayed there. He could notice that she seemed very pale, and almost frightened looking, and that she had dressed for the afternoon in black. Some long clinging stuff, and up near where the blouse opened at the neck she had pinned in one red rose, its warm and velvety petals lying against the white of her neck. The room seemed full of the scent of the roses too, and a little oppressive. Dick held his breath as he looked at her; to him she seemed so beautiful as to be almost amazing; then he came a little further into the room and his eyes took in the other occupant. A man sat, or rather lounged, on the sofa, pulled up under the window. He was watching the meeting with curious eyes, and in his hands he held another rose, the same sort as the one Joan wore. When Dick's eyes met his, he smiled, and laying the rose aside, stood up.
"Did not know it was to be a tea-party, Pierrette," he said, "you ought to have warned me."
Joan had shut the door and moved forward into the centre of the room. She was evidently very nervous over something; Landon was more than a little amused, though also inclined to be annoyed.