Celine went out, and when they were alone Alice, who had never had quite so clear an insight into Helen’s character before, said to her, “Do you care for Mr. Mason?”
“Of course not. How should I, when I don’t know him,” Helen replied, and Alice continued, “Then why not leave him alone. Will it be any satisfaction to win him just to throw him over as you have so many others? Is it right, or womanly?”
“A second Portia come to judgment,” and Helen laughed merrily. “Seriously, though, it isn’t right, or womanly. It is wicked and mean, and I know it as well as you do, and I had made up my mind to quit the business, and maybe take Mr. Prescott for fear some terrible judgment would overtake me. But when I heard Mr. Mason was here all the old Satan woke up in me, and I said I’ll pay him for his slight of me last summer. Perhaps I shall not throw him over. He may be the twenty-first and last. Who knows? I shall be twenty-three in December,—time I was married. Is he there?” and she turned to Celine who had just entered the room and who reported that he was there with Monsieur Hilton and Monsieur Taylor, too.
“Three men to subjugate. Nothing could suit me better,” and Helen clasped her hands in ecstasy. “Au revoir, cousin mine. Wish me success, and don’t forget the library.”
“If it were right I’d pray that she might not succeed. I have prayed for more trivial things than that, and been heard,” Alice thought, as she watched her cousin going down the stairs and saw her turn in the direction of the north piazza.
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE NORTH PIAZZA.
Craig had been to the post office after his mail, and taking his mother’s letters to her room, had returned to his accustomed place on the north piazza. Here he found a large glass of iced lemonade with a straw in it waiting for him, and Uncle Zacheus, with his coat off, seated in an armchair, mopping his face with a yellow silk handkerchief.
“It’s swelterin’ hot again to-day. Most 90 in the shade, and I thought mabby some lemonade would taste good after your walk,” he said to Craig, who thanked him and began to sip the cool beverage. “That’s on old-fashioned toddy tumbler. I told Mark to use it, as I thought you’d want a big drink,” Uncle Zacheus said, and Craig thanked him again, and said he was very thoughtful.
At that moment Mark joined them, glad to escape from the office which at that hour of the day was very warm. There had been a lingering hope in his mind that Miss Helen Tracy might be there. But she wasn’t, and taking one of the vacant chairs, he brought it near to the railing on which he put his feet and leaning back with his hands behind his head, gave himself up to a rest which he felt he needed. Craig, too, had hoped to find Helen on his return from the post office. But he did not, and, both young men had seated themselves with a feeling of disappointment and with no suspicion of the preparations making for a raid upon them.
For a time Uncle Zacheus rambled on about the weather and the new fence for the “cemetry” for which “Widder Wilson had only given five dollars.”