"There's not two years' difference between them—in years. But Leila came out very young—and she's the most thoroughly calculating——"
"Oh, come now, Jane—just because the girl didn't succumb to the impecunious Barry and did like the endowed Bobby——! She may really have liked him, you know."
"Oh, come now, yourself, Jim," retorted his wife good-humoredly. "Just because she has blue eyes! No, if Leila really liked anybody I always had the notion it was Barry—but she wanted Bobby."
For a long moment Cousin Jim was silent, turning the thing over with his cigar. Maria Angelina sat still as a mouse, fearful to breathe lest the bewildering revelations cease. Cousin Jane, over her second cup of coffee, had the air of a humorous and superior oracle.
Then Mr. Blair said slowly, "And Bobby couldn't see her?"
He had an air of asking if Bobby were indeed of adamant and Mrs. Blair hesitated imperceptibly over the sweeping negative. Equally slowly, "Oh, Bobby liked her, of course—she may have turned his head," she threw out, "but I don't believe he ever lost it for a moment. And after he met Ruth that summer at Plattsburg——"
The implication floated there, tenuous, iridescent. Even to Maria Angelina's eyes it was an arch of promise.
Ruth was their daughter, the cousin of her own age. And the unknown Bobby was some one who liked Ruth. And he was some one whom this Leila Grey had tried to ensnare—although all the time Mrs. Blair suspected her of liking more the Signor Barry Elder.
Hotly Maria Angelina's precipitous intuitions endorsed that supposition. Of course this Leila liked that Barry Elder. Of course. . . . But she had not taken him. He was an officer, then—without fortune. Maria Angelina was familiar enough with that story. But she had supposed that here, in America, where dowries were not exigent and the young people were free, there was more romance. And now it was not even Leila's parents who had interfered, apparently, but Leila herself.
What was it Mrs. Blair had said? Thoroughly calculating. . . . Thoroughly calculating—and blue eyes. . . .