After arguing that he was really a great deal more to her than a mere acquaintance, but that Miss Patricia was so far unwilling to acknowledge it, David Hale appeared at the hour of the luncheon with as much cheerfulness as if he had been the most sought after of all the guests.
Following a buffet luncheon, at which the three young men had proved themselves extremely useful in helping to serve the guests, who could not be seated at the table, they were invited to go away until after a meeting of the Camp Fire.
At the present moment it was four o’clock in the afternoon and the Camp Fire ceremony had ended.
The girls were talking together in small groups, Miss Patricia was not in the room, Mrs. Burton and Madame Clermont were arranging for an engagement for the theatre in Paris.
“I wonder if you would mind singing for us?” Mrs. Burton asked. “Please don’t if it would trouble you. But I’ve an idea no one of the girls here has ever heard so beautiful a voice as yours!”
Madame Clermont smiled.
“Of course I shall love to sing. As a matter of fact I have been wounded that you have not asked me before. So it does not require one half that Irish flattery of yours to persuade me! Have you any of your Camp Fire music here with you?”
The next half hour the Camp Fire girls listened for the first time in their lives to the Camp Fire music sung by a great artist.
In the meantime Miss Patricia wandered back into her drawing room, bringing with her the three young men whom she had found in hiding in her little private sitting room on the second floor of the house.
Later Miss Patricia asked for the final song. Madame Clermont had just announced that she could sing but one more song.