I told Vivvie Sartoris that I was afraid I knew all these boys too well; of course Jack and Kent and Charley are just like brothers!  It all”—­Charlotte smiled, signed, shook her disillusioned young head—­“it all seems so awfully silly to me!” she said, and before Rachael could speak she had caught breath again and added laughingly:  “Of course I know Billy doesn’t agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort, and I suppose that satisfies her!  But, in short,” finished Charlotte, giving Rachael’s arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis courts, “in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear, and I’m afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be out of the ordinary!”

Rachael sighed a long deep sigh, but no other answer was demanded, for the knot of onlookers welcomed them eagerly to the benches beside the courts, and even the players—­Gardner Haviland, Louis Chase, a fat young man in an irreproachable tennis costume; Warren Gregory and Joe Butler found time for a shouted “Hello!”

“How do you do, Kent?” said Charlotte to a young man who was sprawling on the sloping grass between the benches and the court.  The young man blinked, sat up, and snatched off his hat.

“Oh, how do you do, Charlotte?  I didn’t know you were here,” he said enthusiastically.  “Some game—­what?”

“It seems to be,” said Charlotte with smiling, deep significance.  Both young persons laughed heartily at this spirited exchange.  A silence fell.  Then Mr. Parmalee turned back to watch the players, and Charlotte, who had seated herself, leaned back in her seat and gave a devoted attention to the game.

Gregory came to Rachael the instant the game was over; she had known, since the first triumphant instant when his eyes fell upon her, that he would.  She had seen the color rush under his brown skin, and, alone among all the onlookers, had known why Greg put three balls into the net, and why he laughed so inexplicably as he did so.  And Rachael thought, for the first time, how sweet it would be to be his wife, to sit here lovely in lavender stripes and loose white coat:  Warren Gregory’s wife.

“You mustn’t do that,” he said, sitting down on the bench beside her, and wiping his hot face.

“Mustn’t do what?” she asked.

“Mustn’t turn up suddenly when I don’t expect you.  It makes me dizzy.  Look here—­what are you doing?  I’m going up to the pool.  I’ve got to get back into town to-night.  When can I see you?”

“Why”—­Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol—­“why, suppose we walk up together?”

They strolled away from the courts deliberately, openly.  Several persons remembered weeks later that they went slowly, stopped now and then.  No one thought much of it at the time, for only a week later Doctor Gregory took his mother to England, and during that week it was ascertained that he and Mrs. Breckenridge saw each other only once, and then were in the presence of his mother and of Carol Breckenridge and young Charles Gregory as well.  There was no tiniest peg for gossip to hang scandal upon, for where old Mrs. James Gregory was, decorum of an absolutely puritanic order prevailed.