From that moment she became his deadly enemy.  To be patted on the head, as if she were a child, an infant—­and that in the presence of the sister whom she had just been lecturing.

“Yes, thank you,” said she, with a splendid dignity, as she proudly walked off.  She went into the small lobby leading to the door.  She called to the little maid-servant.  She looked at a certain long bag made of matting which lay there, some bits of grass sticking out of one end.  “Jane, take this thing down to the cellar at once!  The whole house smells of it.”

Meanwhile Miss White had carried her salad dressing in to Marie, and had gone out again to the veranda where Macleod was seated.  He was charmed with the dreamy stillness and silence of the place, with the hanging foliage all around, and the colors in the steep gardens, and the still waters below.

“I don’t see how it is,” said he, “but you seem to have much more open houses here than we have.  Our houses in the North look cold, and hard, and bare.  We should laugh if we saw a place like this up with us; it seems to me a sort of a toy place out of a picture—­from Switzerland or some such country.  Here you are in the open air, with your own little world around you, and nobody to see you; you might live all your life here, and know nothing about the storm crossing the Atlantic, and the wars in Europe, if only you gave up the newspapers.”

“Yes, it is very pretty and quiet,” said she, and the small fingers pulled to pieces one of the rose leaves that Carry had thrown at her.  “But you know one is never satisfied anywhere.  If I were to tell you the longing I have to see the very places you describe as being so desolate—­But perhaps papa will take me there some day.”

“I hope so,” said he; “but I would not call them desolate.  They are terrible at times, and they are lonely, and they make you think.  But they are beautiful too, with a sort of splendid beauty and grandeur that goes very near making you miserable....  I cannot describe it.  You will see for yourself.”

Here a bell rang, and at the same moment Mr. White made his appearance.

“How do you do, Sir Keith?  Luncheon is ready, my dear—­luncheon is ready—­luncheon is ready.”

He kept muttering to himself as he led the way.  They entered a small dining-room, and here, if Macleod had ever heard of actresses having little time to give to domestic affairs, he must have been struck by the exceeding neatness and brightness of everything on the table and around it.  The snow-white cover; the brilliant glass and spoons; the carefully arranged, if tiny, bouquets; and the precision with which the smart little maiden-servant, the only attendant, waited—­all these things showed a household well managed.  Nay, this iced claret-cup—­was it not of her own composition?—­and a pleasanter beverage he had never drank.

But she seemed to pay little attention to these matters, for she kept glancing at her father, who, as he addressed Macleod from time to time, was obviously nervous and harassed about something.  At last she said,—­