“After the way she’s been running about with this Hemming?”
“Lillian—look out,” he warned. His sister’s smile was tight and fine.
“Oh, well,” she said, with a little shrug, letting her hands drop in a gesture that seemed to make an end of the matter. At the moment her brother appeared to her no less than a monster. But she watched him down the drive with a revulsion of mood. She felt he was leaving her forever, her Wallie, her little brother! He was a year younger than she. She had let her sense of personal injury get in the way of his happiness—and he was going to that woman.
She stood, the palm leaf fallen from her hand. He must be stopped, interrupted somehow. He should not do a thing in a heat to regret forever. Calling his name, she hurried down the drive to the gate, but he had already turned out of the side street, and was beyond both sight and call. She fairly ran across the garden, over lawns and borders, her gown streaming, regardless of dust or wet. Had anyone seen her running, flushed and breathless, across the piazza and up the stairs, he would scarcely have recognized, in her abandon, Mrs. Cornelius Gueste.
She hurried into her habit, trying to remember whether Wallie had said they would go down through Monticito and come back by the beach, or whether it were just the other way about. Where could she hope to catch up with them? It would be a humiliating affair enough for her; but she was not in the least thinking of herself, but only of Wallie, and some way by which she could avert his catastrophe.
Walter had departed with the responsibility of what he was about to do heavily upon him. His sister’s look had not failed to affect him. He felt he was adventuring, risking, going to deal with unknown quantities.
He was to meet Blanche in town, where she had told him she had some shopping to do. Halfway down the wide, wandering Main Street he saw her mare fastened in front of the confectioner’s. Riding up, he could glimpse through the glass door Blanche, a tall habited figure, strolling here and there, sampling the sweets. He sat waiting, scowling in the glare of the afternoon sun on white awnings and sidewalks. He saw Hemming jump out of his cart a few doors down, in front of the saddler’s, with a broken bridle over, his arm.
“Hey, Carter!” He came and leaned on the flank of Walter’s horse, his hand on the back of the saddle.
“Beastly familiar,” Walter thought.
Hemming’s good-natured, sensual face was vivid with animal spirits. “Where were you last night?” he said. “You did miss it!”