didn’t ask you’, the woman said in such a fierce voice that it almost made Kate jump. For an instant she glared at Felix; then she shrugged her shoulders and peered at Kate.
‘That outburst wasn’t meant for you, Miss Archer’, Felix apologized. ‘It was meant for me, though I’m afraid you’re partly to blame. Youth and beauty can be very disturbing as we grow older, can’t they, Ruby, my love?’
Beneath the suavity of his tone there was a sudden hardness that Kate would not have expected: it seemed not so much Felix’s own voice as a reflection of his wife’s.
‘Oh shut up!’ the woman said; then as she turned to Kate her face lost something of its belligerence. ‘I’m sorry, miss’, she said. ‘But Felix is right. It wasn’t meant for you. We’re a queer household here at the farm, and you might as well learn it now as later.’
‘I’ll take up your bags’, Felix said. ‘Don’t let Ruby scare you, Miss Archer. Her bark is worse than her bite.’
Felix walked back through the hall to the stairway, and Kate looked over her shoulder to see where Bobbie had gone. At first she did not discover her; but then she saw her, through the still-open door, a small black and white object racing around a pine tree a hundred yards or more from the house.
‘You better step in there’, Ruby said, escorting her to a doorway on the right. ‘Mr. Gladstone wants to talk to you before you see June. He’s lying down. I’ll go call him.’
Kate, who was apt to be critical of furniture arrangements, glanced sharply about the room. It was large and low-ceiled, its floor entirely covered with a sea-green carpet, which recalled her impression, as they had looked down from the hilltop, that the valley was under water. For its size, the room was sparsely furnished: there were several sofas and easy chairs; along the walls stood two or three carved chests like pieces she had seen in Brittany. Besides the three french windows opening on the terrace, there was a fourth one, at the further end, screened by a Venetian blind; and through the slats she could see another, smaller terrace, this one paved not with grass but with red tiles and strewn with wicker chairs and tables. Beyond it, in the sunlight, she caught the gleam of delphinium and scarlet lilies.
She thought of the grim woman who had just left her: perhaps Ruby, if she was as jealous of Felix as she seemed, had sent the note in a last effort to prevent the arrival of an attractive young girl in the house. ‘But of course Ruby had never seen me’, thought Kate, and then smiled at her own conceit. And yet, in fairness to herself, it was not really conceit: she had learned by experience that most men found her nice to look at, and it would be crazy to pretend that she did not know it and did not thoroughly enjoy it, even if it was sometimes embarrassing. Or again, perhaps Felix had sent it himself, for the sake of domestic peace, suspecting that Ruby would resent her coming. She wished that either one of these explanations was true; then everything would be cleared up and she would feel free to enjoy this wonderful place; but she was not convinced. She couldn’t believe it of Felix, and not even of Ruby. In spite of her dourness, she looked honest and only too forthright.
As she strolled toward the farther window, Kate noticed that a pair of feet was protruding from one of the wicker chairs whose back was turned to the house. They were small feet, wearing scarlet sandals with very high heels, and through the straps Kate could see that the toe-nails were painted crimson. Could that be Clotilde, she wondered: it was certainly not June. But then the thickness of the ankles and the flabbiness of the bare calves, daubed with sun tan, made her sure that this was an older woman. It must be Mrs. Gladstone, June’s mother, though one wouldn’t have thought it. A tall glass, empty except for a sprig of mint, stood on the tiles beside her.
Then as Kate idly watched, an extraordinarily pretty girl in grey flannel slacks appeared on the terrace from somewhere behind the house. She had a small head set on a long neck; she looked as composed, as beautifully made up, as the models in a fashion display; but the most striking thing about her was her hair, which floated down to her shoulders in waves of the glossiest, palest gold that Kate had ever seen. Kate thought regretfully of her own hair, which had had that almost silvery brightness when she was two or three (Mother had kept a lock of it), but which had darkened ever since. She suspected that she would not like this girl: she seemed far too smooth; but she did arouse Kate’s sporting instincts. It would be interesting to see her fiancé.
‘Well you owe me five dollars’, Clotilde called to her stepmother (Kate was sure she had identified them both). ‘I beat him 6-4, 6-3.’
‘Anyone else but you,’ a throaty voice answered from the chair, ‘wouldn’t feel right about taking the money. It’s quite obvious that if you did beat him it was only because he let you.’
The first thing that struck Kate about this voice was the fact that, with its drawl, the mannered way it lingered on certain syllables, it assumed the presence of an audience. Since they were betting, Kate felt she would be willing to bet even money that Mrs. Gladstone had once been an actress.
‘You ought to know Ralph by this time!’ Clotilde laughed, and her tone seemed exaggeratedly casual, as if she were trying to underline its difference from the older woman’s. ‘He’s not so damn chivalrous as all that.’
‘Chivalrous!’ Mrs. Gladstone snorted. ‘Who said anything about chivalry? If he didn’t bother to win, it was because he was bored, poor lamb, and God knows I don’t blame him! You’re not at your best, my dove, on the tennis court.’
The voices came through the open window as clearly as if they were in the room. Kate did not know what to do: should she cough, or pretend to adjust the blind? But it would be embarrassing to make her presence known now; and as far as Clotilde and Mrs. Gladstone were concerned, she felt they would not care in the least who might hear them.
Clotilde had walked nearer her stepmother’s chair, and was gazing down at her with a fixed irritating smile.
‘Mavis, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid what really worries you is the idea, and I admit there’s something in it, that it’s I who am growing bored with him.’
‘And why, pray, should that interest me?’ Mavis sounded like a duchess on the stage of a summer theatre.
Clotilde lifted her fine eyebrows and drew her lips together in an expression of innocence. ‘Ah, why indeed?’ she asked.
‘Darling, do you know what you remind me of?’ Mrs. Gladstone went on after the slightest pause; and Kate was now aware of a rasping note beneath the smoothness of her voice. ‘You make me think of a mosquito, a very charming, slim mosquito – that goes without saying – with lovely gauzy wings, but a mosquito nonetheless. And I’m terribly afraid, you know, that Ralph is beginning to agree with me.’
Clotilde seemed to be having a very good time. ‘Let’s see what you remind me of’, she said. ‘It’s like that descriptive game, isn’t it, and you have chosen the subject of insects. Of course it’s very hard to think of you in such terms. If you had chosen flowers, say, or nice things to drink, nothing would have been easier. But if I had to describe you as an insect, I think I should be inclined to choose a tick, one of those pretty, plump little ticks you find on dogs.’
Mrs. Gladstone laughed huskily. ‘I hope not a tick’, she said. ‘They can be quite dangerous, you know.’
‘Not unless you let them get under your skin’, Clotilde replied.
Mrs. Gladstone’s laugh died away in a kind of purring chuckle. ‘I don’t flatter myself that I could ever get under yours’, she said. ‘It’s-shall
