“No; why didn’t you come?”

“Bibi went lame.  I’d have had another horse saddled if I hadn’t seen you, over my shoulder, join Mrs. Dysart.”

“Too bad,” he commented listlessly.

“Why?  You had a perfectly good time without me, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, pretty good.  Delancy Grandcourt was out after luncheon, and when Rosalie left he stuck to me and talked about you until I let my horse bolt, and it stirred up a few mounted policemen and riding-schools, I can tell you!”

“Oh, so you lunched with Mrs. Dysart?”

“Yes.  Where is Kathleen?”

“Driving,” said the girl briefly.  “If you don’t care for any tea, there is mineral water and a decanter over there.”

He thanked her, rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held.  At intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a slight smile on his face.

“Has anything particularly interesting happened to you, Duane?” she asked, and somehow thought of Rosalie Dysart.

“No.”

“How are your pictures coming on?”

“The portrait?” he asked absently.

“Portrait?  I thought all the very grand ladies you paint had left town.  Whose portrait are you painting?”

Before he answered, before he even hesitated, she knew.

“Rosalie Dysart’s,” he said, gazing absently at the lilac-bush in flower as the wind-blown curtain revealed it for a moment.

She lifted her dark eyes curiously.  He began to stir the ice in his glass with a silver paper-cutter.

“She is wonderfully beautiful, isn’t she?” said the girl.

“Overwhelmingly.”

Geraldine shrugged and gazed into space.  She didn’t exactly know why she had given that little hitch to her shoulders.

“I’d like to paint Kathleen,” he observed.

A flush tinted the girl’s cheeks.  She said nervously: 

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“I’ve meant to.  Somehow, one doesn’t ask things lightly of Kathleen.”

“One doesn’t ask things of some women at all,” she remarked.

He looked up; she was examining her empty teacup with fixed interest.

“Ask what sort of thing?” he inquired, walking over to the table and resting his glass on it.

“Oh, I don’t know what I meant.  Nothing.  What is that in your glass?  Let me taste it....  Ugh!  It’s Scotch!”

She set back the glass with a shudder.  After a few moments she picked it up again and tasted it disdainfully.

“Do you like this?” she demanded with youthful contempt.

“Pretty well,” he admitted.

“It tastes something like brandied peaches, doesn’t it?”

“I never noticed that it did.”

And as he remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the loop of his riding-crop.