Spencer, on his part, was quite content to ask no questions. He was with the woman who exercised a subtler and more permanent fascination over him than anyone he had hitherto met, not excepting Miss Wilford, and this drive was only cumulative proof of favor on her part, one more sign that their relations were approaching a crisis. What the precise and ultimate result of their growing intimacy was to be he had not felt the need to consider. For the moment it sufficed to know that, though both her partiality for him and his influence over her were unmistakable, she had up to this point kept him at bay—eluded him when she seemed on the point of throwing herself into his arms. This skilful restraint on her part had served to heighten the interest of his pursuit, and also to deepen the ardor of his attachment.
Before they had gone beyond the limits of Westfield several of their mutual acquaintance were encountered, all of whom were too well-bred to betray the vivid interest which the meeting aroused. Mrs. Cole, on her way to play golf at the club, nodded to them blithely from her phaeton, as though it were the most natural thing in the world they should be together, and so concealed from them her dire suspicions which were thus afforded fresh material to batten on. Gerald Marcy, sportsman-like and dignified on his grizzled hunter, saluted them with the off-hand decorum of a man of the world.
"Glorious weather for man and beast," he asserted, as much as to say that he knew how to mind his own business. When they had passed him, however, he tugged nervously at his mustache and wagged his head like a soothsayer.
The newly engaged couple, sitting side by side in a village cart of similar pattern to theirs, managed to conceal that they did not know which way to look, and sustained the ordeal creditably, though the girl was conscious that her cheeks were flushing. As they left the culprits behind, Peggy clutched her lover's arm and whispered hoarsely, "Did you see that?"
"It's too bad," said Guy, who, being neither blind nor imbecile, had not failed to take in the full import of the situation. "I for one am all in the dark as to how this thing is going to end."
"I knew they would be great friends, but I never supposed for a minute that it would come to anything like this," mused the maiden sadly. "Even when she chaperoned us that night I took for granted it was nothing really serious."
Mrs. Gordon Wallace, who, being a new-comer from the West, was less of an adept, perhaps, in disguising her real feelings, put up her eye-glass a little feverishly as she bowed. Whereupon it pleased Lydia to whisk her head round a moment later.
"She was staring after us with all her eyes!" she exclaimed. "I knew she would; she couldn't resist the temptation. She will report that I have a guilty conscience, whereas I was merely studying human nature in violation of my own social instincts."
"What did she see, after all?" queried Spencer, supposing that his companion stood in need of a little soothing.
"Everyone is talking about us, as you know," Lydia answered, ignoring the query. "We have been for months the burning topic at Westfield, and the fame of our misdeeds has spread abroad. Everything considered, people have been wonderfully forbearing to our faces—perfect moles, in fact—but behind our backs they are chattering like magpies. Fannie Cole intimated as much, though I had guessed it."