This was what she had looked forward to. Uncle Zach was a garrulous, amusing old man, who at times was better out of the way. Mark interested her more than she would have thought it possible, and had he been the equal of Craig, as the world defines equality, she would have given him her attention and left Craig alone. She had never flirted with a hotel clerk,—a bartender,—and she scolded herself for thinking so much about him, and contrasting him with Craig, who was inclined to be silent at first. Evidently she must lead the conversation, and she began by asking if he found it at all dull in the country.
“I shall like it for a while,” she said. “It is so different from the places we are in the habit of visiting, Saratoga, for instance. We were there last summer. I suppose you have been there?”
She looked at him as innocently as if she did not know that her question would pique him a little. Craig Mason and his horse, Dido, had been nearly as conspicuous at the Clarendon as Helen Tracy had been at the United States, and that she should not have heard of him was, to say the least, rather humiliating to his pride. He didn’t know that she was paying him for his slight and that she felt quite repaid when she saw his look of chagrin, which he covered with a laugh as he replied, “Oh, yes, I was there last summer, but did not have the pleasure of meeting you. I heard of you, though. Indeed, everybody did that. How could they help it?”
He was complimenting her rather stiffly and blushing like a girl as he did it, but Helen knew she was gaining ground, and thanked him with her eyes which were always as expressive as words. After that they grew very social, and at last, although she tried to stave it off, the conversation turned upon books. It was in vain that Helen brought forward Tennyson as a most charming author. Craig brushed him aside for Browning, his favorite, and hers, too, she finally said, suggesting that she believed he was too obscure for most people to enjoy thoroughly without a teacher.
“Yes, that’s true,” Craig admitted, “but I like him, though I confess it is rather tiresome reading him alone. I have taken up Sordello, and your cousin was kind enough to say that she thought you might like a short reading some afternoon. My mother, I know, will join us; possibly your mother and Mr. Hilton, when he can. He is a very intelligent man,—far above the average. Do you think you would like it?”
“I shall be delighted,” Helen answered promptly, wondering which she should find the pleasanter, driving over dusty, stony roads, with sassafras and brier bushes growing beside them, or listening to Sordello, of which she had not the most remote idea.
But she had committed herself, and Craig was pleased, and believed he had found a bright disciple of Browning, and told her he expected much from her opinion and quick appreciation of what was to most people abstruse and dry. Helen thought of the Potted Sprats in Mrs. Opie’s White Lies, and concluded she was eating a tremendous one.
“What shall I do if Alice doesn’t get me the book?” she asked herself, deciding that a sick headache, whenever Browning was on the carpet would be the only alternative.
As if in answer to her thought Alice appeared at that moment, and in response to an interrogatory glance from Helen nodded an affirmative. She had unquestionably found the book and Helen’s fears were given to the winds. With her ready memory she could, if she tried, commit pages of Sordello, or anything else, and her face glowed with satisfaction and confidence. Craig had scarcely given Alice a thought in his absorption with Helen, but when she appeared a reaction came and he wondered why he should suddenly feel so cool and restful. It was because she looked so restful and cool, he concluded, and yet she declared herself very warm, and, declining the chair he offered her, sat down upon the steps and fanned herself with her hat, while Helen, relieved from all anxiety, began what Alice called an outrageous flirtation of jokes and brilliant sallies which poor Craig no more understood than she did Browning, and which so confused and bewildered him that he was glad when at last he saw his stately mother coming toward him with a showily-dressed woman whom he recognized as Mrs. Tracy.