"I say, Allen!" he cried, "you've got a fine collection for the zoo here. If Barnum had only lived to see this day! I--oh, I say! Look there!" He stood still, and gazed ahead of him in genuine admiration. "Say, there's somebody that doesn't look as if she belonged to this menagerie. The Queen of Sheba, all right. Who is her royal highness? Know her, Allen?"
Gilbert looked in the same direction, and became possessed of an unreasoning anger. Elsie Cameron was standing by her brother's side, under a spreading pine. Her trim, dark-green dress and hat, the soft rose-leaf tints of her face, and the rich bronze gold of her hair, made a picture so perfect that he might easily have excused the stranger's outburst. But he longed, more than ever, to knock him down.
"Yes," he answered shortly, "I know her."
"You do! Oh, come, now! You've simply got to introduce us. Hasn't he, Mrs. Windale? Do make him."
"I should like to meet the young lady," said Rosalie's aunt graciously. "She is very beautiful. Don't you think so, Rose?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so, rather," said Rosalie dryly. "But it's the piper I want to meet."
"Mrs. Windale and I will go up to the throne and present ourselves, if you don't, Allen," Blackburn cried.
"Dr. Allen," exclaimed Rosalie's sister, with laughing impatience, "do introduce us. Guy will rave about her all the way home, and bore us to death, if he doesn't get his own way."
Without a word, Gilbert led his party up to the pine knoll and presented them to his three friends.
He was conscious of a feeling of relief that they were such as could not possibly provoke the visitors' mirth. As he introduced Blackburn he was forcibly impressed by the sudden change in the young man's manner. His flippant gaiety vanished before Miss Cameron's stately candor, and he addressed her with the greatest deference.
Now was Gilbert's chance. He turned from the group for a word alone with Rosalie. She seemed quite eager for it herself. She had such heaps to tell him, she declared, that she never had time to put into a letter. She had had the most gorgeous summer at the seaside, and had been on two motoring tours since her return, and they were planning for the gayest winter. She chatted away, but with never a word for him; not a question as to his welfare or his work, and though she spoke to him alone, her eyes kept darting annoyed glances toward the two under the pines.