Wrapping the boxes in several folds of tissue paper Mrs. Tracy handed them to Mark, saying “I hold you responsible for them.” She saw them placed in the safe, and decided that if she dared she would some day ask the high and mighty clerk to show her how to unlock it herself. She had taken a dislike to Mark for no reason at all except that he was made too much of, and as a hotel clerk had no business to be so gentlemanly and fine looking and hold himself in so dignified a manner towards her as if he felt himself to be her equal. The dislike was mutual, for Mark had decided that she was a proud, exacting, frivolous woman, whom it would be hard to please.
“Mamma, I think you were very uncivil to Mr. Hilton, and acted as if you were afraid to trust your diamonds with him,” Helen said when they were alone in their room.
“To tell you the truth I was,” Mrs. Tracy replied. “I really don’t know why, but I have a queer feeling with regard to him. Mr. Taylor makes quite too much of him. I trust you will teach him his place if he tries to step out of it. I saw him looking at you with those queer eyes of his in a way I didn’t like. They have a singular trick of moving round, and you can’t help following them.”
“Oh, mamma, a cat may look upon a king, and Mr. Hilton may surely look at me,” Helen said, knowing perfectly well what her mother meant by Mark’s eyes, which compelled you to meet them, whether you would or not.
She had met them readily,—in fact had rather challenged them to look at her, and then had sent back a glance which made Mark’s blood tingle. No woman had ever affected him as she did and after he knew dinner was over in the salon he found himself constantly watching for a sight of her, or the sound of her voice. Two or three times he went round to the north piazza hoping to find her there, but Craig sat alone poring over Browning and listening occasionally for the trail of a skirt round the corner. He still had upon the table the lily Alice had given him, but it was shrivelled and faded and he scarcely knew it was there. The rose had overshadowed the lily and Alice was forgotten.
CHAPTER XV.
THE DRIVE.
At precisely four o’clock Jeff drove the hotel carriage up to the door with a flourish and a feint as if it were hard to hold the horses, who looked like anything but runaways and would have dropped their heads if they had not been checked so high. Jeff had spent two hours in scrubbing the carriage, polishing the harness and rubbing down the horses. His divinity, Miss Alice, was going to drive, and there was nothing too good for her. Helen had not impressed him as favorably as her cousin. “She don’t look as real as my girl,” he had thought when he first saw her, and he never had cause to change his opinion. At intervals Uncle Zach had superintended the washing and polishing and rubbing of the turnout which he said couldn’t be beaten outside of Worcester, and he waited with a good deal of pride for the effect it would have upon the young ladies.
Alice was the first to appear, looking very cool and fresh and pretty in her dark blue serge made over from a last year’s dress, and adapted as nearly as possible to the prevailing style. She was a natural dressmaker and had given her costume a few touches of her own ideas. Like Uncle Zach Jeff thought her a daisy, and although Craig and Mark were both there, the former fastening his gloves and the latter holding the reins by the horses’ heads, he gallantly helped her to the back seat and smoothed down her dress with the air of a much older person. Then they waited five minutes and ten minutes until the young men began to get impatient. They did not know that Helen was seldom on time. She had taken her after dinner nap and bath and had dawdled in her dressing, notwithstanding Celine’s efforts to hurry her. When at last she did appear she was like a picture stepping out of a fashion plate. Her tailor made dress and jacket were without a flaw in style and fit, her gloves harmonized perfectly with her dress, and the soft light veil twisted around her sailor hat and tied in a big bow under her chin was very becoming. In the morning she had worn Mark’s rose; this afternoon she had a great clump of the fleurs-de-lis, Craig’s color, fastened to her dress.
“Have I kept you waiting long? I am very sorry,” she said, with such an air of penitence that both Craig and Mark forgave her, assuring her that it was of no consequence. “Alice, I know, thinks me delinquent,” she said. “She is always on time; always doing the right thing.”
“That’s so,” came from Jeff, who emphasized his words with a sudden whopover on the grass.