"Credit, Beth!" he said rousingly. "I told Vina I could worship you for it!"
"Don't, please—David. I don't need it. I'm too happy over you both…. And then, it wasn't all mine, you know. I think Mr. Bedient saw you together in his mind. I think he meant me to startle you to your real empire——"
"Did he?" Cairns asked eagerly.
"Hasn't it turned out perfectly?"
Beth did not miss the gladness which this hint gave him. She knew that
Bedient's thought of it would be like an authority to Vina as well….
She felt herself drawing farther and farther back from the lives of the
elect, but joyously she urged David to tell about their house in
Nantucket.
"And, Beth," he said intensely. "That was Bedient's doing, too. I have—all I have seems to be the happiness part."
"Poor dear boy—how hard!"
"…I was telling him how Vina loved Nantucket," Cairns went on, "some of the rare things she said about the Island and the houses in Lily Lane, and how I planned to go over and find her there this month. He knew we were coming on very well…. One night at the Club, he asked me why I didn't buy one of those houses in Lily Lane, fix up a studio in one of the upper rooms, and then show it to her some summer morning and let it seep in slowly that it was hers—and my heart, too——"
"Beautiful!" Beth exclaimed. A trace of color came to her face.
"I'm telling it badly. Vina will tell you better. Anyway, he wouldn't let me go over alone. You remember when we went away together—for three or four days early in June?"