"I shall have to trust you to keep an eye on her. I want her to know the right people." He spoke between the flashes of the cigar he was relighting.
"Don't worry about her. You may trust her around the world. Evelyn has already manifested an interest in my advice," she added, smiling to herself in the dark,—"and she didn't seem much pleased with it!"
Evelyn and Saxton had met the others, who were coming up from the walks, and there was a redistribution at the house; it was too beautiful to go in, they said, and the strolling abroad continued. A great flood of moonlight poured over the grounds. A breeze stole up from the valley and made a soothing rustle in the trees. Evelyn rescued Wheaton and Miss Warren from each other; she sent Raridan away to impart, as he said, further western lore to the Yankee. She followed, with Wheaton, the arc which the others were transcribing. A feeling of elation possessed him. The tide of good fortune was bearing him far, but memory played hide and seek with him as he walked there talking to Evelyn Porter; he was struck with the unreality of this new experience. He was afraid of blundering; of failing to meet even the trifling demands of her careless talk. He remembered once, in his train-boy days, having pressed upon a pretty girl one of Miss Braddon's novels; and the girl's scornful rejection of the book and of himself came back and mocked him. Raridan's merry laugh rang out suddenly far across the lawn; he had done more with his life than Raridan would ever do with his; Raridan was a foolish fellow. Saxton passed them with Miss Marshall; Saxton was dull; he had failed in the cattle business. James Wheaton was not a town's jester, and he was not a failure. Evelyn was telling him some of Belle Marshall's pranks at school.
"She was the greatest cut-up. I suppose she'll never change. I don't believe we do change so much as the wiseacres pretend, do you?"
She was aware that she had talked a great deal and threw out this line to him a little desperately; he was proving even more difficult than she had imagined him. He had been thinking of his mother—forgotten these many years—who was old even when he left home. He remembered her only as the dominant figure of the steaming kitchen where she had ministered with rough kindness and severity to her uncouth brood. His sisters—what loutish, brawling girls they were, and how they fought over whatever silly finery they were able to procure for themselves! A faint flower-scent rose from the soft skirts of the tall young woman beside him. He hated himself for his memories.
He felt suddenly alarmed by her question, which seemed to aim at the undercurrent of his own silent thought.
"There are those of us who ought to change," he said.
The others had straggled back toward the veranda and were disappearing indoors.
"They seem to be going in. We can find our way through the sun-porch; I suppose it might be called a moon-porch, too," she said, leading the way.
They heard the sound of the piano through the open windows, and a girl's voice broke gaily into song.