Color stole into the young girl's cheeks even while she laughed with them. She was conscious of a faint and confused half-distress beneath her mounting confidence. They were so _very_ jocular. . . .
Of course this was but chaff, she understood, and she began to wonder if that other, that young Signor Elder, had been but joking. It might be the American way. . . . And yet this was all flattering chaff and so perhaps she could trust the flattery of her secret hope.
Surely, surely, it was all going to happen. He would come--she would see him again.
Meanwhile she shook her young braids at Johnny Byrd.
"But you are so sudden! I think he is a flirter, yes?" she said gayly to Mr. Blair who smiled back appreciatively and a trifle protectively at her.
But Bobby Martin drawled, "Oh, no, he's not. He's too careful," and more laughter ensued.
After luncheon they went back into the hall where the three men drifted out into a side room where cigars and cigarettes were sold, and began filling their cases, while Mrs. Blair stepped out on the verandas and joined a group there. Ruth remained by the fireplace, and Maria Angelina waited by her.
"Your friends are very nice," she began with a certain diffidence, as her cousin had nothing to say. "That Johnny Byrd--he is very funny----"
"Oh, Johnny's funny," said Ruth in an odd voice. She added, "Regular spoiled baby--had everything his way. Only an old guardian to boss him."
Maria Angelina did not smile. "But that is very sad," she said soberly. "No home life----"
"Don't get it into your head that Johnny Byrd wants any _home life_," said her cousin dryly, and with a hint of hard warning in her negligent voice. "He's been dodging home life ever since he wore long trousers."
"He must then," Maria Angelina deduced, very simply, "be rich."
It sounded to Maria like a flock of ducks, but she perceived that it was given for affirmation. She followed Ruth's glance to where the backs of the young men's heads were visible, bending over some coins they were apparently matching. . . . Johnny Byrd's head was flaming in the sunshine. . . .
"He's a bird from a hard-boiled egg," Ruth said with a smile of inner amusement.
But whatever cryptic signal she flashed slipped unseen from Maria Angelina's vision. Johnny Byrd was nice, but it was a gay, cheery, everyday sort of niceness, she thought, with none of the quicksilver charm of the young man at the dinner dance. . . . And she was unimpressed by Johnny's money. She took the millionaires in America as for granted as fish in the sea.