"She isn't jumping down Johnny's throat at all," the girl went on. "I was afraid, that first day, when she asked such nutty questions. . . . But she seems to take it all for granted. That ought to hold Johnny for a while--long enough so he won't get tired and throw her down for somebody else before he goes."
"You think, then, there isn't a chance of----?"
Mrs. Blair left the hypothesis in midair, convicted of ancient sentiment by the frank amusement of her young daughter's look.
"No, my dear, there isn't a chance of," Ruth so competently informed her that Mrs. Blair, in revolt, was moved to murmur, "After all, Ruth, people do fall in love and get married in this world."
Patiently Ruth gave this thought her consideration and in fair-mindedness turned her scrutiny upon past days to evoke some sign that should contradict her own conclusions.
"She's got something--it's something different from the rest of us--but it would take more than that to do for Johnny Byrd."
"You don't suppose she's beginning to think----?" hazarded Mrs. Blair.
Better than her daughter, she envisaged the circumstances which might have led, in her Cousin Lucy's mind, to this young girl's visit. Lucy, herself, had been taken abroad in those early days by a competent aunt. Now Lucy, in the turn of the tide, was sending her daughter to America.
Jane Blair would have liked to play fairy godmother, to make a benevolent gesture, to scatter largess. . . .
But she was not going to have it said that she was a fortune hunter. She was not going to alarm Johnny Byrd and implicate Bob Martin and disturb the delicate balance between him and Ruth.
Lucy's daughter must take her chances. This wasn't Europe.
"Well, I've said enough to her," Ruth stated briskly, in answer to her mother's supposition. "I don't know how much she believes. . . . You know Ri-Ri is seething with Old World sentiment and she may be such a little nut as to think--but she doesn't act as if she really cared about it. It isn't just a pose. . . . Do you imagine," said Ruth, suddenly lapsing into a little Old World sentiment herself, "that she's gone on some one in Italy and they sent her over to forget him? That might account----"
"Lucy's letter didn't sound like it. She was very emphatic about Maria Angelina's knowing nothing of the world or young men. I rather gathered," Mrs. Blair made out, "that the family had a plain daughter to marry off and wanted the pretty one in ambush for a while--they take care of those things, you know."