"Marcia, you know Miss Habberton--Miss Van Wyck."
"Of course," they both echoed coolly. Marcia examining Una impertinently, Una cheerfully indifferent.
"Miss Habberton and I were after butterflies," said Jerry, "but she has promised to stop for tea."
"I really ought to be going, Jerry," said Una.
"But you can't, you know, after promising," said Jerry with a smile.
The introductions made, the party moved on toward the cabin, Miss Habberton and I bringing up the rear.
"I could kill you for this," she whispered to me and the glance she gave me half-accomplished her wish.
"It isn't my fault," I protested. "I didn't know they were coming until yesterday--and you know you said--"
"Well, you ought to have warned me. I've no patience with you--none."
"I feel like a fool--and it's your fault."
Women I knew were not reasonable beings, but I expected better things than this of Una. I followed meekly, aware of my insufficiency. I felt sorry if Una was uncomfortable, but I had seen enough of her to know that she was quite able to cope with any situation in which she might be placed. Marcia with Jerry had gone on ahead and I saw that, while the girl was talking up at him, Jerry walked with his head very erect. The situation was not clear to Marcia. I will give her the credit of saying that she had a sense of divination which was little short of the miraculous. It must have puzzled her to find Una here if, as I suspected. Jerry made her the confidante of all his plans, present and future--Una Habberton, the girl who had ventured alone within the wall, the account of whose visit had once caused a misunderstanding between them. The thought of Una's visit I think must have always been a thorn in Marcia's side, for Jerry's strongest hold on Marcia's imagination was nurtured by the thought that she, Marcia, was the first, the only woman that Jerry had ever really known. And here was her forgotten and lightly esteemed predecessor sporting with Jerry in the shade!
In the cabin we made a gay party. Una, I am sure, in spite of her cheerful pretense with Phil Laidlaw, had a woman's intuition of Marcia's antagonism. Jerry joined and chatted in Una's group for a moment, but I could see that he had lost something of his buoyancy. I watched Marcia keenly. Though absorbed apparently in the pouring of the tea, a self-appointed prerogative which she had assumed with something of an air--(meant, I am sure, for Una)--her narrowly veiled eyes lost no detail of any happening in Una's group, and her ears, I am sure, no detail of its conversation. Subtle glances, stolen or portentous, shot between them, and Jerry, poor lad, wandered from one to the other like some great ship becalmed in a tropic sea aware of an impending tempest, yet powerless to prevent its approach.