"Why didn't you bring Violet with you?" asked Edgar.
"I tried to; that is, I suggested that it was too heavenly a night to keep still, and asked her if she would like to go to walk--" As he talked, Phil kept his eyes on the white figure in the hammock and he spoke eagerly as if he were justifying himself. "But," he went on, "she said she had a headache and felt that she must excuse herself."
Edgar looked up triumphantly at the man in the moon, but he refused to see the joke. His hilarious mood had changed. He beamed down now in pensive golden serenity with the usual remote benevolence for all lovers which has won his reputation.
"What was there in that tea I made?" inquired Kathleen lazily. "Mother has the headache, too. Isn't it a shame on such an evening."
"Too bad," said Phil perfunctorily. He approached the hammock and neither he nor Kathleen noted that Edgar made an unostentatious departure such as the comic papers describe as a cat-like sneak. Certainly Pluto could not have moved any more quietly, and his heart was gay.
"Headache!" he thought, the even teeth broadly exhibited. "What that headache needs is the water-cure"; and the boarders sitting out in front of the Wright cottage heard the "Toreador Song" blithely whistled by some one coming across the field.
When Edgar arrived at the farmhouse he looked about for a familiar figure. Among the little group, Eliza Brewster was the only one he knew. He approached her with his most debonair manner.
"Good evening, Eliza. Will you please tell Miss Manning I am here?"
"So Mr. Sidney said; but I thought she might see me for just a minute. I want to tell her something important."
"Well, that's too bad, 'cause she's gone to bed. I'll take any message you want me to, and give it to her in the morning. I'd rather not disturb her now 'cause I just took her up a pitcher o' water and she told me she was goin' to try to go to sleep."
Edgar was so blankly silent that Eliza spoke again.
"I'll call Mrs. Wright if you'd rather see her. She's in her room writin' a letter."
"No, no, don't trouble yourself," said the visitor, lightly. "Good night."
He moved away quickly toward the Villa Chantecler and made a détour around it. The little piazza overlooking the sea gleamed white in the moonlight. The bay leaves stood up crisp and polished. Edgar recalled the mocking in Violet's eyes as they had sat there this afternoon. To lose an evening like this. It was a crime!