And the upshot of the matter was a dainty note which found its way by the hands of the private-car porter to Winton, laboring manfully at his task of repairing the landslide damages.
“Mr. Somerville Darrah's compliments to Mr. John Winton and Mr. Morton P. Adams, and he will be pleased if they will dine with the party in the car Rosemary at seven o'clock.
Adams said “By Jove!” in his most cynical drawl when Winton gave him the dinner-bidding to read: then he laughed.
Winton recovered the dainty note, folding it carefully and putting it in his pocket. The handwriting was the same as that of the telegram abstracted from Operator Carter's sending-book.
“I don't see anything to laugh at,” he objected.
“No? First the Rajah sends the sheriff's posse packing without striking a blow, and now he invites us to dinner.”
“You make me exceedingly tired at odd moments, Morty. Why can't you give Mr. Darrah the credit of being what he really is at bottom--a right-hearted Virginia gentleman of the old school?”
“You don't mean that you are going to accept!” said Adams, aghast.
There was no more to be said, and Adams held his peace while Winton scribbled a line of acceptance on a leaf of his note-book and sent it across to the Rosemary by the hand of the water-boy.
Their reception at the steps of the Rosemary was a generous proof of the aptness of that aphorism which sums up the status _post bellum_ in the terse phrase, “After war, peace.” Mr. Darrah met them; was evidently waiting for them.
“Come in, gentlemen; come in and be at home,”--this with a hand for each. “Virginia allowed you wouldn't faveh us, but I assured her she didn't rightly know men of the world: told her that a picayune business affair in which we are all acting as corporation proxies needn't spell out anything like a blood feud between gentlemen.”
For another man the informal table gathering might have been easily prohibitive of confidences _a deux_, even with a Virginia Carteret to help, but Winton was far above the trammelings of time and place. He had eyes and ears only for the sweet-faced, low-voiced young woman beside him, and some of his replies to the others were irrelevant enough to send a smile around the board.
“How very absent-minded Mr. Winton seems to be this evening!” murmured Bessie from her niche between Adams and the Reverend Billy at the farther end of the table. “He isn't quite at his best, is he, Mr. Adams?”