As for Scott, he sat on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him--who were not listening--that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a thrasher at six hundred yards.
Which edified neither Sylvia nor Duane, but the boy continued to impart information with unimpaired cheerfulness until Kathleen came out from the house.
"I think she has a headache," replied Kathleen, looking at Duane.
Kathleen said gently that Geraldine did not feel like seeing anybody at that time. A moment later, in obedience to Scott's persistent clamouring for scarabs, she went across the lawn with the young master of Roya-Neh, resigned to the inevitable in the shape of two-horned scarabs or black-billed cuckoos.
It had always been so with her; it would always be so. Long ago the Seagrave twins had demanded all she had to give; now, if Geraldine asked less, Scott exacted double. And she gave--how happily, only her Maker and her conscience knew.
Duane was still reading--or he had all the appearance of reading--when Sylvia lifted her head from her hand and turned around with an effort that cost her what colour had remained under the transparent skin of her oval face.
"Duane," she said, "it occurred to me just now that you might have really mistaken what I said and did the other night." She hesitated, nerving herself to encounter his eyes, lifted and levelled across the top of his paper at her.
He waited; she retained enough self-command to continue with an effort at lightness:
"Of course it was all carnival fun--my pretending to mistake you for Mr. Dysart. You understood it, didn't you?"
She went on: "I--don't exactly remember what I said--I was trying to mystify you. But it occurred to me that perhaps it was rather imprudent to pretend to be on--on such impossible terms with Mr. Dysart----"
There was something too painful in her effort for him to endure. He said laughingly, not looking at her:
"Oh, I wasn't ass enough to be deceived, Sylvia. Don't worry, little girl." And he resumed the study of his paper.
Minutes passed--terrible minutes for one of them, who strove to find relief in his careless reassurance, tried desperately to believe him, to deceive that intuition which seldom fails her sex.