As the girl came splashing through the shallow flow, dripping, glowing, shaking the drops from her hair, Mrs. Gueste saw she carried a little dog, a terrier, in her arms, and this seemed to put the last touch to her conspicuousness. She came up the beach talking, gesticulating vividly, to Walter. Once she nodded to a loose-lipped, pleasant-eyed man who passed them, but she did not give Mrs. Gueste a glance until she was fairly before her—until Walter spoke his sister’s name. Then, when she gave suddenly the full glow of her face, and the strength and light of her hot, hazel eyes, she was, as Mrs. Crosby had said, overwhelming. The touch of her damp hand to Mrs. Gueste’s delicate glove was the touch of compelling physical magnetism that could be looked at safely only through a lorgnon.
But not the lorgnon, nor its accompanying manner, disconcerted Miss Remi. Her own manner was easy, without freeness.
“You do look like your brother, Mrs. Gueste,” she said, seating herself in the sand, and warning the wet terrier away with upraised finger.
“Flattered, Lillian?” Wallie murmured, with cloaked satisfaction.
“Oh, you’re very nice looking, Wallie,” Blanche Remi told him, with a frank, smiling, up-and-down glance.
Mrs. Gueste’s lorgnon rose sharply to this sentence, but her voice was gentle.
“Don’t you find it rather cold going in this morning?” she asked.
The girl’s faint change of expression appreciated the round turn that had been given the conversation.
“Oh, it’s always pretty cold, but I keep moving, so I keep warm,” she said. There was a glint of mischief in her wonderful eyes.
“But don’t you feel cold while you’re out?” Mrs. Gueste persisted.