Which frightened Kathleen, and she asked whether anything serious might be anticipated.
So, as he was taking the next train, there was nothing to do. He left a prescription and whizzed away to the railroad station with the last motor-load of guests.
There remained only Duane, Rosalie Dysart, Grandcourt, and Sylvia Quest, a rather subdued and silent group on the terrace, unresponsive to Scott's unfeigned gaiety to find himself comparatively alone and free to follow his own woodland predilections once more.
"A cordial host you are," observed Rosalie; "you're guests are scarcely out of sight before you break into inhuman chuckles."
"Speed the parting," observed Scott, in excellent spirits; "that's the truest hospitality."
"I suppose your unrestrained laughter will be our parting portion in a day or two," she said, amused.
"No; I don't mind a few people. Do you want to come and look for scarabs?"
"Scarabs? Do you imagine you're in Egypt, my poor friend?"
Scott sniffed: "Didn't you know we had a few living species around here? Regular scarabs. Kathleen and I found three the other day--one a regular beauty with two rhinoceros horns on the thorax and iridescent green and copper tinted wing-covers. Do you want to help me hunt for some more? You'll have to put on overshoes, for they're in the cow-yards."
Rosalie, intensely bored, thanked him and declined. Later she opened a shrimp-pink sunshade and, followed by Grandcourt, began to saunter about the lawn in plain sight, as people do preliminary to effacing themselves without exciting comment.
But there was nobody to comment on what they did; Duane was reading a sporting-sheet, souvenir of the departed Bunbury; Sylvia sat pallid and preoccupied, cheek resting against her hand, looking out over the valley. Her brother, her only living relative, was supposed to have come up that morning to take her to the next house party on the string which linked the days of every summer for her. But Stuyvesant had not arrived; and the chances were that he would turn up within a day or two, if not too drunk to remember her.
So Sylvia, who was accustomed to waiting for her brother, sat very colourless and quiet by the terrace parapet, pale blue eyes resting on the remoter hills--not always, for at intervals she ventured a furtive look at Duane, and there was something of stealth and of fright in the stolen glance.