She glanced roguishly in Rob’s face as she concluded, as if recalling past mishaps, and he smiled in return, but in a strained, unnatural fashion which she was quick to notice. Rob knew none of the people of whom she had been talking with his brother, and could enter into none of the jokes which were associated with their names. It was only natural, therefore, that he should feel debarred from the conversation.
Peggy drew a long breath of dismay. What a strange world it was, and how differently things turned out from what one expected! To think that at this first meeting it should be Rob who was left out in the cold, and not Hector; Rob who stood aside and was silent, Hector who laughed and talked with the ease of intimate friendship! It gave her a miserable feeling of self-reproach that it should be so; and yet how was she to blame? The situation had arisen naturally enough.
She gave a little movement of impatience, and her thoughts went off at a tangent, while in appearance she was still listening attentively to Hector’s reminiscences.
Rosalind and Arthur were whispering together with longer pauses between the sentences than is usual in the converse of friends. She was smiling into his face in her sweetest, most winsome manner, but he did not look happy. His face wore the same troubled, fighting expression which his sister had noticed on the evening of her arrival in London.
Hector’s complacent serenity stood out in soothing relief at once from Arthur’s strain and Rob’s moody silence, for moody Rob looked indeed, with his closed lips and heavy brows. A vivid remembrance flashed into Peggy’s mind of a schoolboy, raising his head from a microscope and scowling darkly at some unhappy wight who had incurred his displeasure, and with the remembrance a wild longing to be a school-girl again, in short frocks and pigtail, a scrap of a school-girl who could swing herself on to the table to pinch his arm, or mimic each gesture as it came, pulling her own sleek locks into an imitation of his shaggy crop, and scowling so darkly that, against his will, he was forced into laughter. Many a time in the days gone by had she smoothed the “black dog” off Rob’s back in some such fashion; but now the age of propriety had dawned, and it was not permitted to take such liberties.
“I’m a lady growed, and I’ll act according,” said Peggy to herself; “but dear, dear me, what a handicap it is! He would enjoy it so much, and so should I. Well, at least I can say I want to go upstairs, and then we can have another nice talk. I haven’t said half or a quarter of what is in my mind.”
She rose from her seat, turning towards Rob to claim his escort; but before she had time to speak, Hector’s arm was thrust forward, and Hector’s voice protested eagerly:
“Let me take you. I have so much to tell you yet. Take my arm, and let me pilot you through the crowd.”
Peggy stood hesitating and uncertain between the two tall brothers.
“But—” she began feebly, and then looked at Rob, waiting for him to finish the sentence.