He crossed the tennis lawn, went through the little opening at the end of the hedge, and down to the seclusion of the croquet ground. Half-way along the sloping bank beneath the upper terrace some one had left a rug. He threw himself upon it, and tried like many another poor fool to reason down his hunger. But all the sensitive nerves with which the imaginative man, for his curse or his blessing, is endowed, were vibrating from head to foot. Her words sang in his ears: “Why should you care so much about what I am and what I am not?” The real answer burst passionately from his heart.
He had lain there for about half an hour when a gay little laugh aroused him.
It was Connie Deering, bewitchingly apparelled, a dainty, smiling pale yellow butterfly, holding as usual an absurd parasol over her head.
“I have been looking for you all over the place,” she remarked. “They told me you were somewhere about the grounds. May I sit down?”
He made room for her on the rug, and taking the parasol from her hand, closed it. She settled herself gracefully by his side.
“I repeat I have been looking for you,” she said.
“The overpowering sense of honour done me has deprived me of speech,” replied Jimmie, with an attempted return to his light-hearted manner.
“Norma is entertaining those dreadful Spencer-Temples,” said Mrs. Deering, irrelevantly.
“I must have had a premonition of their terrors, for I fled from before their path,” he said. “After all, poor people, what have they done to be called names?” he added.
“So am I, yet people don't run away from me.”
“I saw you run away from them,” she said with a significant nod. “I was at my bedroom window. They spoiled a most interesting little conversation.”
Jimmie was startled. He looked at her keenly, but only met laughing eyes.
“They interrupted me certainly. But I could n't have inflicted my society on Miss Hardacre all the afternoon.”
“You would have liked to, wouldn't you? Jimmie dear,” she said with a change of tone, “I want to have a talk with you. I'm the oldest woman friend you have--”
“And by far the sweetest and kindest and prettiest and fascinatingest.”
She tapped his hand with her fingers. “Ssh! I'm serious, awfully serious. I've never been so serious in my life before. I've got a duty. I don't often have it, but when I do, it's a terrible matter.”