Rex looked at her inquiringly, but before he could ask what she meant, they turned a corner and came upon Jack Travis, who joined them, and on hearing that Rex was from New York began to ask after his orange grove, as if he thought Reginald passed it daily on his way to his business.
“What a stupid you are!” Grace said. “Mr. Hallam never saw an orange grove in his life. Why, you could put three or four United Kingdoms into the space between New York and Florida.”
“Reely! How very extraordinary!” the young Englishman said, utterly unable to comprehend the vastness of America, towards which he was beginning to turn his thoughts as a place where he might possibly live on seven hundred dollars a year with Grace to manage it and him.
When they reached the hotel it was lunch-time, and after a few touches to his toilet Rex started for the salle-à-manger, thinking that now he should see Bertha, in whom he felt a still greater interest since learning that it was she to whom he had given the black eye on the Teutonic. “The hand of fate is certainly in it,” he thought, without exactly knowing what the it referred to. Mrs. Hallam and Mrs. Haynes and Grace were already at the table when he entered the room and was shown to the only vacant seat, between his aunt and Grace.
“This must be Miss Leighton’s place,” he said, standing by the chair. “I do not wish to keep her from her accustomed seat. Where is she?” and he looked up and down both sides of the long table, but did not see her, “Where is she?” he asked again, and his aunt replied “She is not coming to-day. Sit down, and I will explain after lunch.”
“What is there to explain?” he thought, as he sat down and glanced first at his aunt’s worried face, then at Grace, and then at Mrs. Haynes.
Then an idea occurred to him which almost made him jump from his chair. He said to Grace:
“Does Miss Leighton lunch in her room?”
“Oh, no,” Grace replied.
“Doesn’t she come here?” he persisted.