She looked around at me and laughed. "Isn't he a goose?" she asked in a pretended whisper. "Where was it in Europe that he lost his brains? He has brought none of them home."
"It may have been at Damascus," said Mr. Floyd. "Did I tell you that after I fell through the trapdoor in Damascus and broke my ribs, they put a railing about the place and asked a piastre for a look at the spot where the American gentleman almost came to an untimely end?"
But Helen did not laugh: she put her arm about his neck and brought his cheek to her lip, and kept it there, giving it mute caresses now and then, while she smoothed his hair about his temples with her little hand.
"I'll take some more tea, if you please," remarked Mr. Floyd after a while in a meek voice.—"I'm obliged to endure a good deal of this sort of thing, my boy: it's not so unpleasant as it may look, but nevertheless it requires some stimulant to keep up an emotion of agreeable surprise. By the bye, what do you think of my little girl, now that she is quite grown up?"
"Don't dare to tell," said Helen. "I'm dreadfully vain all at once, for papa flatters me so that the rugged courtesy of the outside world would seem hard to me. Still, papa's compliments count for very little. When Georgy comes in presently just listen to what he says to her."
And precisely at this juncture there was a little commotion in the hall, and Miss Lenox did come in with Tony Thorpe. She had spoken to my mother, kissed Helen and answered Mr. Floyd's badinage before she saw me, yet when her eyes did turn toward me she showed no surprise.
"Have you come at last?" she inquired coolly, holding out her hand. "I am glad to see you again, Mr. Randolph."
I greeted her as calmly, and said, "How are you, Thorpe?" to her companion, with another shake of the hand. And then everybody sat down, and there was fresh tea brought. I noticed that Thorpe was quite assiduous in his attentions to Helen over the cups and saucers, and seemed as much at home in the house as a tame spaniel. Meanwhile, Miss Lenox had sat down by my mother and begun telling her the events of the day. The déjeuner had been given on a yacht in the bay, and had begun in mistake and ended in disaster: the wrong people had come, while the right ones had been kept away, like the invited guests in the Gospel. The sun had been too warm, the breeze too cool, the men who talked to her garrulous and stupid, and the women abominably over-dressed.
"Dear Helen," cried Georgy with effusion, "I have wished myself at home with you all day.—Dear Mrs. Randolph, tell me what you have been doing with yourselves;" and she wasted a slight caress on my mother.
"Our doings were nothing remarkable in themselves," said my mother gently, with a little smile—one of those smiles which women keep for use among themselves, and rarely give to men.