“I have an idea that you and I are to lunch alone,” said Hamil as they reached the house; and so it turned out, for Malcourt was going off with Portlaw somewhere and Cecile was dressing for Virginia’s luncheon.

“Did you care to go with me to the Ascott-O’Hara function?” asked Shiela, pausing on the terrace.  Her voice was listless, her face devoid of animation.

“I don’t care where I go if I may go with you,” he said, with a new accent of intention in his voice which did not escape her.

She went slowly up the stairs untying her long veil as she mounted.  Cecile in a bewildering hat and gown emerged upon the terrace before Shiela reappeared, and found Hamil perched upon the coquina balustrade, poring over a pocketful of blue-prints; and she said very sweetly:  “Good-bye, my elder brother.  Will you promise to take the best of care of our little sister Shiela while I’m away?”

“The very best,” he said, sliding feet foremost to the terrace.  “Heavens, Cecile, you certainly are bewitching in those clothes!”

“It is what they were built for, brother,” she said serenely.  “Good-bye; we won’t shake hands on account of my gloves....  Do be nice to Shiela.  She isn’t very gay these days—­I don’t know why.  I believe she has rather missed you.”

Hamil tucked her into her chair, the darky pedalled off; then the young man returned to the terrace where presently a table for two was brought and luncheon announced as Shiela Cardross appeared.

Hamil displayed the healthy and undiscriminating appetite of a man who is too busy mentally and physically to notice what he eats and drinks; Shiela touched nothing except fruit.  She lighted his cigarette for him before the coffee, and took one herself, turning it thoughtfully over and over between her delicately shaped fingers; but at a glance of inquiry from him: 

“No, I don’t,” she said; “it burns my tongue.  Besides I may some day require it as a novelty to distract me—­so I’ll wait.”

She rose a moment later, and stood, distrait, looking out across the sunlit world.  He at her elbow, head bent, idly watched the smoke curling upward from his cigarette.

Presently, as though moved by a common impulse, they turned together, slowly traversed the terrace and the long pergola all crimson and white with bougainvillia and jasmine, and entered the jungle road beyond the courts where carved seats of coquina glimmered at intervals along the avenue of oaks and palmettos and where stone-edged pools reflected the golden green dusk of the semi-tropical foliage above.

On the edge of one of these basins the girl seated herself; without her hat and gloves and in a gown which exposed throat and neck she always looked younger and more slender to him, the delicate modelling of the neck and its whiteness was accentuated by the silky growth of the brown hair which close to the nape and brow was softly blond like a child’s.