The girl turned her lovely head, curiously, not understanding. Garry laughed, but his voice was not quite steady when he said:
“But it all depends on you, Dulcie, how splendid my mother may prove herself.”
“On me!”
“On your—kindness.”
“My—kindness!”
Thessalie came up in her pretty carnation-rose cloak, esquired by the enraptured Westmore, expressing admiration for the clothing adorning the very obvious object of his devotion:
“All girls can’t wear a thing like that cloak,” he was explaining proudly; “now it would look like the devil on you, Dulcie, with your coppery hair and——”
“What exquisite tact!” shrugged Thessalie, already a trifle restive under his constant attendance and unremitting admiration. “Can’t you, out of your richly redundant vocabulary, find something civil to say to Dulcie?”
But Dulcie, still preoccupied with what Barres had said, merely gave her an absent-minded smile and walked slowly out beside her to the porch, where the headlights of a touring car threw two broad beams of gold across the lawn.
It was a swift, short run through the valley northward among the hills, and very soon the yellow lights of Northbrook summer homes dotted the darkness ahead, and cars were speeding in from every direction—from Ilderness, Wythem, East and South Gorloch—carrying 370 guests for the Gerhardts’ moonlight spectacle and dance.