In spite of herself Lucy's eye swivelled round to Desterro, busy with a copy of the menu.
"One of our associated firms is here, and I am working with them for a week or two," Rick said smoothly; and laughed at her with his eyes. And then, to put her mind completely at rest: "I came with a chit to Miss Hodge, vouching for my relationship, my respectability, my solvency, my presentability, my orthodoxy-"
"Oh, be quiet, Rick," Desterro said, "it is not my fault that my father is Brazilian and my mother French. What is saffron dough-cake?"
"Teresa is the loveliest person to take out to a meal," Rick said. "She eats like a starved lion. My other women friends spend the whole evening reckoning the calories and imagining what is happening to their waists."
"Your other women friends," his cousin pointed out a trifle astringently, "have not spent twelve months at Leys Physical Training College, being sweated down to vanishing point and fed on vegetable macedoine."
Lucy, remembering the piles of bread wolfed by the students at every meal, thought this an overstatement.
"When I go back to Brazil I shall live like a lady and eat like a civilised person, and it will be time then to consider my calories."
Lucy asked when she was going back.
"I am sailing on the last day of August. That will give me a little of the English summer to enjoy between the last day of College and my going away. I like the English summer. So green, and gentle, and kind. I like everything about the English except their clothes, their winter, and their teeth. Where is Arlinghurst?"
Lucy, who had forgotten Desterro's abrupt hopping from one subject to another, was too surprised by the name to answer immediately and Rick answered for her. "It's the best girls' school in England," he finished, having described the place. "Why?"
"It is the College excitement at the moment. One of our students is going there straight from Leys. One would think she had at least been made a Dame, to listen to them."
"A legitimate reason for excitement, it seems to me," Rick observed. "Not many people get professional plums straight out of college."
"Yes? It really is an honour then, you think?"
"A very great one, I imagine. Isn't it, Miss Pym?"
"Very."
"Oh, well. I am glad of it. It is sad to think of her wasting the years in a girls' school, but if it is an honour for her, then I am glad."
"For whom?" Lucy asked.
"For Innes, of course."
"Were you not at lunch today?" asked Lucy, puzzled.
"No. Rick came with the car and we went over to the Saracen's Head at Beauminster. Why? What has that to do with this school affair?"
"It isn't Innes who is going to Arlinghurst."
"Not Innes! But they all said she was. Everyone said so."
"Yes, that is what everyone expected, but it didn't turn out like that."
"No? Who is going, then?"
"Rouse."
Desterro stared.
"Oh, no. No, that I refuse to believe. It is quite simply not possible."
"It is true, I am afraid."
"You mean that-that someone-that they have preferred that canaille, that espece d'une-!"
"Teresa!" warned Rick, amused to see her moved for once.
Desterro sat silent for a space, communing with herself.
"If I were not a lady," she said at length in clear tones, "I would spit!"
The family party looked over, surprised and faintly alarmed. They decided that it was time they were going, and began to collect their things and reckon up what they had had.
"Now look what you have done," Rick said. "Alarmed the lieges."
At this moment the rarebits arrived from the kitchen, with Miss Nevill's large chintz presence behind them; but The Nut Tart, far from being distracted by the savoury food, remembered that it was from Miss Nevill that she had first had news of the Arlinghurst vacancy, and the subject took a fresh lease of life. It was Rick who rescued Lucy from the loathed subject by pointing out that the rarebit was rapidly cooling; Lucy had a strong feeling that he himself cared nothing for the rarebit, but that he had somehow become aware of her tiredness and her distaste for the affair; and she felt warm and grateful to him and on the point of tears.
"After all," pointed out Rick as The Nut Tart at last turned her attention to her food, "I don't know Miss Innes, but if she is as wonderful as you say she is bound to get a very good post, even if it isn't exactly Arlinghurst."
This was the argument with which Lucy had sought to comfort herself all the long afternoon. It was reasonable, logical, and balanced; and as a sort of moral belladonna-plaster it was so much red flannel. Lucy understood why The Nut Tart rejected it with scorn.
"How would you like to have that preferred to you?" she demanded through a large mouthful of rarebit. «That» was Rouse. "How would you like to believe that they were going to pay you honour, a fine public honour, and then have them slap your face in front of everyone?"
"Having your teeth kicked in," Beau had called it. Their reactions were remarkably similar. The only difference was that Desterro saw the insult, and Beau the injury.
"And we had such a lovely happy morning in this very room the other day with Innes's father and mother," Desterro went on, her fine eyes wandering to the table where they had sat. This, too, Lucy had been remembering. "Such nice people, Rick; I wish you could see them. We were all nice people together: me, and Miss Pym, and the Inneses pere et mere, and we had an interval of civilisation and some good coffee. It was charming. And now-"
Between them, Lucy and Rick steered her away from the subject; and it was not until they were getting into the car to go back to Leys that she remembered and began to mourn again. But the distance between Bidlington and Leys as covered by Rick's car was so short that she had no time to work herself up before they were at the door. Lucy said goodnight and was going to withdraw tactfully, but The Nut Tart came with her. "Goodnight, Rick," she said, casually. "You are coming on Friday, aren't you?"
"Nothing will stop me," Rick assured her. "Three o'clock, is it?"
"No, half-past two. It is written on your invitation card. The invitation I sent you. For a business person you are not very accurate."
"Oh, well, my business things I naturally keep in files."
"And where do you keep my invitation?"
"On a gold chain between my vest and my heart," Rick said, and went the winner out of that exchange.
"Your cousin is charming," Lucy said, as they went up the steps together.
"You think so? I am very glad. I think so too. He has all the English virtues, and a little spice of something that is not English virtue at all. I am glad he is coming to see me dance on Friday. What makes you smile?"
Lucy, who had been smiling at this typically Desterro view of her cousin's presence on Friday, hastened to change the subject,
"Shouldn't you be going in by the other door?"
"Oh, yes, but I don't suppose anyone will mind. In a fortnight I shall be free to come up these steps if I like-I shall not like, incidentally-so I might as well use them now. I do not take well to tradesmen's entrances."
Lucy had meant to pay her respects to the Staff before going to her room in the wing, but the hall was so quiet, the air of the house so withdrawn, that she was discouraged and took the line of least resistance. She would see them all in the morning.
The Nut Tart paid at least a token obedience to College rules, and it was apparent from the hush in the wing corridor that the «bedroom» bell must have gone some minutes ago; so they said goodnight at the top of the stairs, and Lucy went away to her room at the far end. As she undressed she found that her ear was waiting for a sound from next door. But there was no sound at all; nor was there any visible light from the window, as she noticed when she drew her own curtains. Had Innes not come back?