“Inside as well as out? Perhaps, though, you were never inside. Were you?”
“Yes.”
“And have met Miss Saltus?”
“Yes.”
“I hear that she is very familiar with the country people. Invites them and accepts their invitations.”
As this was not a direct question Sherry did not feel called upon to answer. Her eyes were blazing with scorn at the questioning, which might have gone on if Ruth Doane had not called to her cousin and said: “For Heaven’s sake, Amy, don’t spend any more time talking of the Saltuses when we have so much to do; and I want to know if I can have this lovely scarf. See how it becomes me.”
She was draping around her head and neck a beautiful scarf of Spanish lace which Mrs. Crosby had brought from abroad and which was very becoming to Ruth’s dark style of beauty.
“Yes, you can have it,” Amy said, and as she could learn nothing in particular from Sherry she gave her up, but said to one of her friends: “Rose Saltus and I are great friends, although not at all alike. I hoped she might be here this summer, but she has to stay with her mother. But her brother Craig is coming soon. I hope he will be here for the party, though he can’t dance. What a pity he is so lame!”
Sherry was interested now, and her cheeks burned as she thought of Craig Saltus recognizing her as an acquaintance and friend, as she knew he would. She had heard from Mrs. Groves something about the Saltus family coming, but time had passed and they had not come, nor had she heard of them again until now, when she felt every nerve quiver with apprehension and dread. Rose Saltus had been very kind to her and so had Craig, and she wondered what he would say when he found her there.
“He will think me an impostor, and I begin to feel like one,” she thought, half resolving to leave before Craig Saltus came.