"They tell me the climate's a perfect Turkish bath, but we've done a lot in Manila; it'll be half-way decent now that the moat's grassed over and their confounded drains filled up."
"Oh, if you've got to drains!"
The colonel laughed good-humoredly. "I don't know but that they're more in my line than match-making," he said.
All this while Rachel had been listening to appropriate remarks and Mrs. Billop was particularly affectionate.
"My dear," she whispered, "I'm envious; you're positively the only one I should have loved for Sidney."
Rachel did not sink under this tremendous compliment but she smiled a little. To have escaped Sidney was something. But she reflected that Mrs. Billop only said it because she was safely out of the way. Sidney was one of those interesting youths who remain firmly staked in the list as safe home-prizes, guarded by their anxious mothers, who flutter about them clucking wildly at every speck on the horizon, lest it prove to be a matrimonial chicken-hawk descending upon their offspring. Mrs. Billop would have clucked very wildly had she thought that Rachel intended to descend upon Sidney, for she regarded Rachel as strong-minded, a new woman.
It was fortunate that Rachel was strong-minded, else she would scarcely have faced the ordeal without betraying herself. As it was, she went through it successfully and saw most of the guests pairing off for the day to leave her alone with Belhaven, a prospect at once amazing and terrible. What would she do with Belhaven?
Astry asked himself the same question with conscious irritation, as he went off in his motor with Count Massena, Pamela, and Mrs. Prynne. Eva was asking it with a thrill of jealousy, as she sallied forth to the tennis-court with Sidney and Van Citters. Dr. Macclesfield was asking it with grim humor, as he disposed of Mrs. Billop and Colonel Sedley in the wagonette, and, perhaps, no one was more embarrassed by it than Belhaven himself.
The last guest had drifted out of the library. They had been left obviously alone together, and as the wagonette disappeared, they turned from the window and faced each other in the broad, uncompromising light of noon, with only the slight screen of the striped awning that shielded the long terrace. Rachel remembered instantly the figure on that terrace the night before; then she raised her eyes and met those of Belhaven. The man's handsome face, keen-featured, clean-shaven and well proportioned, was haggard, and his expression, as he met Rachel's clear glance, was deeply shamed. She saw it with a quick thrill of doubt: had Eva told her the truth? Then suddenly her cheek reddened deeply; was it because he must marry her? The situation was intolerable. They stood looking at each other a long moment in painful silence before she moved a little away from him and took the nearest chair; her knees were trembling so that she could not stand, but she was apparently calm.
"Will you sit down?" she said coldly; "I must speak to you."