"And you?"
"Je n'en sais rien, monsieur."
"Mais je voudrais savoir."
"Pourquoi?"
"To lay a true course by the stars"; he looked at her blue eyes and she laughed easily under the laughing flattery.
"You must seek another compass--to-morrow," she said. Then it occurred to her that nobody could guess her decision in regard to Quarrier; and she partly raised her eyes, looking at him, indolent speculation under the white lids.
She liked him already; in fact she had liked few men as well on such brief acquaintance.
"You know the majority of the people here, or coming, don't you?" she inquired.
"Who are they?"
She began: "The Leroy Mortimers?"
"Oh, yes."
"Lord Alderdene and Captain Voucher, and the Page twins and Marion?"
"Yes."
"Rena Bonnesdel, the Tassel girl, Agatha Caithness, Mrs. Vendenning--all sorts, all sets." And, with an effort: "If I'm to drive, I should like--to--to know what time it is?"
He informed her; and she, too indolent to pretend surprise, and finding reproach easier, told him that he had no business to permit her to forget.
His smiling serenity under the rebuke aroused in her a slight resentment as though he had taken something for granted.
Besides, she had grown uneasy; she had wired Quarrier, saying she would meet him and drive him over. He had replied at once, naming his train. He was an exact man and expected method and precision in others. She didn't exactly know how it might affect him if his reasonable demand was unsatisfied. She did not know him very well yet, only well enough to be aware that he was a gentleman so precisely, so judiciously constructed, that, contemplating his equitable perfections, her awe and admiration grew as one on whom dawns the exquisite adjustments of an almost human machine.
And, thinking of him now, she again made up her mind to give him the answer which he now had every reason to expect from her. This decision appeared to lubricate her conscience; it ran more smoothly now, emitting fewer creaks.
"You say that you know Mr. Quarrier?" she began thoughtfully.
"Not well."
"I--hope you will like him, Mr. Siward."
"I do not think he likes me, Miss Landis. He has reasons not to."
She looked up, suddenly remembering: "Oh--since that scrape? What has Mr. Quarrier to do--" She did not finish the sentence. A troubled silence followed; she was trying to remember the details--something she had paid small attention to at the time--something so foreign to her, so distant from her comprehension that it had not touched her closely enough for her to remember exactly what this young man might have done to forfeit the good-will of Howard Quarrier.