Sudie arose the morning after her garden-party flushed and feverish, with a strange consciousness of being unlike herself. She drifted from room to room; peeped into the parlor, with its fading garlands, in a little superstitious awe of her last night's vision, and then took to standing at the gate or looking from the west windows toward the city, as if she expected some one. But she did not: it was only that all her anxiety lay there. At 10 A.M. she took the pony carriage to town and hurried to Aunt Fanny, only to learn that the etiquette of the code had excluded the dowager's messenger, and that Her Majesty was so incensed thereat as to resolve to let matters take their course. This by no means satisfied Sudie. She thought it horrible, wicked. She would see papa—she had all a child's confidence in papa—and he could stop it. Passing the hotel, an impulse seized her to appeal to her cousin; for he was her cousin, Sudie repeated to herself to justify her resolution; and so, without any formed plan of appeal, she sent up her card. She was enough confused and embarrassed at her cousin's entrance to have deceived a wiser man than Lind Mason; but, luckily, he was better at reading the backs of his cards than a woman's face, and, to his credit, felt supremely silly.
"Cousin Lind," said the little girl, speaking the first thought in her mind, "I was going to see papa, and—" and she broke down.
"Hem! Mr. Brown is in the city, ha? Of course," blundered Mason, shy as an awkward girl to her first lover, and obstinately turning that eye away from her on which Bob Nettles had left his mark.
"And—and—" hesitated Sudie, with a little shuddering, nervous laugh, like a smothered cry, "have you and Mr. Nettles met this morning?"
To do Mason justice, he was too artificial and shallow to retain any resentments. He was only confused at his novel position, and before he could muster a reply Sudie went on: "Because I want you and him to be friends," with that tremulous laugh again; "and I should be so mad if—if he was to—to hurt you."
"By Joe!" thought Lind, "what am I to do if she proposes outright?" He was terribly scared: no one is so timid as one of these fast, horsey men in the presence of an innocent, pure-minded girl. The situation was trying: he thought it was his cue to put his arm about her and say something; but when he saw how she sat back in the chair, and had tested his own nerves, he felt he could not do it. Little Sue, therefore, had it all to herself, recovering courage by her own freedom, without any conception of what was troubling the thoughts of the great, handsome, awkward booby before her. "Aunt Fanny wants you to be friends," she continued, "and so do I."
Mason began to pluck up a little at this. The association of Aunt Fanny's name suggested that she had talked the matter over with her niece, as she had with him, and broken the ice for him. He looked over his shoulder to see if the parlor was clear. She was leaning forward now, holding out two plump little hands, like a child going to beg, and with a sly, roguish look too. He thought he could do it now: he would drop gracefully on one knee and—
And Sudie went on: "Somebody else will be mad too, you don't know." A half whisper from the roguish pucker of those dimpling lips: "Ma'amselle Hortense."
The blood rushed to that ensanguined face till it looked like a great romanete apple: "Hortense?"
"Yes," with a half-dozen mischievous, confidential little nods. "There! Now you go right straight and see Mr. Nettles, and tell him I sent you; and if he doesn't behave himself to you, just let me know." And, nodding intelligence, little Sue rose with a rustle and flutter of puffs and bows, in childish confidence of having done her whole duty and stopped that wicked, wicked business.