But not the lorgnon, nor its accompanying manner, disconcerted Miss Remi. Her own manner was easy, without freeness.
"You _do_ look like your brother, Mrs. Gueste," she said, seating herself in the sand, and warning the wet terrier away with upraised finger.
"Flattered, Lillian?" Wallie murmured, with cloaked satisfaction.
"Oh, you're very nice looking, Wallie," Blanche Remi told him, with a frank, smiling, up-and-down glance.
Mrs. Gueste's lorgnon rose sharply to this sentence, but her voice was gentle.
"Don't you find it rather cold going in this morning?" she asked.
The girl's faint change of expression appreciated the round turn that had been given the conversation.
"Oh, it's always pretty cold, but I keep moving, so I keep warm," she said. There was a glint of mischief in her wonderful eyes.
"But don't you feel cold while you're out?" Mrs. Gueste persisted.
The girl, sitting unwinking, unfrowning, in the glare, looked like some luxurious creature sunning itself. A faint, fine powdering of freckles gave even her skin a tawny hue. Even down the throat, where Lillian was milk white, she showed a tint like old ivory, with creamy shadows under the square chin. She looked up at Lillian Gueste's face in the dainty shadow of her parasol.
"Do I _look_ cold?" she laughed. "You must let me show you how to keep warm. Do you swim? Oh, you should! It saves your nine lives. You ride, of course?"
"If I can find a horse that suits me." Mrs. Gueste's soft reply suggested she was hard to suit.
"You must try my Swallow. She's perfect. We must have a saddle party, mustn't we, Wallie?" the girl appealed to him. "But first you may take me to call on Mrs. Gueste. I know she'll have too many engagements to risk calling on her hit-or-miss."
Mrs. Gueste's reply was a murmur, as she rose, shaking out her soft linen skirts.
Walter Carter felt indefinitely uncomfortable. Blanche Remi stood beside his sister, slightly taller, more vigorously, more carelessly, more brilliantly made. She looked rather commanding, as if she were used to having things her own way; which was precisely what Lillian, little as she looked it, was used to having. But now her manner toward Blanche was almost appealing.
"I am going to beg your escort away from you, Miss Remi, if you will permit it, just to drive me back to Mrs. Crosby's. I haven't seen him for three months, you know." Her voice and eyes somehow made three months seem interminable.