Part 6 (1/2)
As she again looked up she met the ardent gaze and ingratiating smile of an elegant young man who was sauntering up the train-platform to the exit gate, fastidiously apart from his fellow pa.s.sengers. He raised his hat, and at the girl's curt nod of recognition, hastened through the gate for a more intimate greeting.
”My dear Dodie!” he exclaimed, reaching for her hand. ”This is a most delightful surprise.”
”My dear Laffie!” she mocked, deftly slipping both slender hands into her m.u.f.f. ”I quite agree as to it's being a surprise.”
”Then you didn't come down to meet me?”
”You?” she asked, with an irony too fine drawn for his conceit. ”Come to meet you?”
”Yes. Didn't you get my note saying that all work on my bridge was stopped by the cold and that I would run down to see you?”
”To see me--plus the world, the flesh, and the devil!”
”Now, Dodie!” he protested, with a smirk on his handsome, richly colored face.
The girl's eyes hardened into black diamonds as she met his a.s.sured gaze. ”Mr. Brice-Ashton, you will hereafter kindly address me as 'Miss Gantry.' You must be aware that I am now _out_.”
”Oh, I've no objections, just so _we're_ not out,” he punned.
She gave him her shoulder, and peered eagerly through the pickets of the iron fence at a train that was backing into the station. Ashton shrugged, lighted a gilt-tipped cigarette, and asked: ”Permit me to inquire, Miss Gon-tray, if I'm not the happy man for whom you wait, who is?”
She replied without turning: ”How can I tell until I see him? I think it will be the hero. If not, it will be the earl.”
”Hero?--earl?” repeated Ashton.
”Yes, whichever one Vievie leaves for me.”
”What! Genevieve? Miss Leslie? She's not--Is she really coming home so soon?--when she had such a chance for a gay season in London?”
”Don't give yourself away. The London season is in summer.”
”You don't say! Well, in England, then. Why didn't you write me?”
”I'm not running a correspondence-school or news agency, Mr.
Brice-Ashton.”
”Oh, cut it, Dodie! Post me up, that's a good girl! What I've heard has been so muddled. This hero business, for a starter--what about it? I thought it was an English duke that chartered the steamer to rescue Genevieve.”
”No, only the son of a duke,--James Scarbridge, the Right Honorable the Earl of Avondale.”
”My ante!”
”It's in the jack-pot, and as good as lost. What chance have you now to win Genevieve,--with a real earl and a real hero in the field?”
”Earl _and_ hero? I thought he was the hero.”
”That's one of the jokes on mamma. Earl Jimmy had nothing to do with the rescue s.h.i.+ps that Uncle Herbert cabled to search the Mozambique coast. No; Jeems chartered a tramp steamer on his own account, to look for friend Tommy. He found the heroic Thomas and, incidentally, the fair Genevieve--who wasn't so _very_ fair after weeks of broiling in that East African sun.”
”It's wonderful--wonderful! To think that she alone of all aboard her steamer should have survived s.h.i.+pwreck on that savage coast!”