Part 25

She had no thought that Gerard might be hesitating in uncertain humility before the delicate maidenhood that invested her like a fine atmosphere forbidding approach. She was not even dimly aware that her averted face controlled to soft impassivity, the intent gaze on her work which veiled her eyes beneath their heavy lashes, the regular movement of her slender fingers as she sewed, conveyed an impression of unmoved serenity that might have quelled a vainer man than Allan Gerard. Yet it was so, and he temporized; not knowing that for her there were three people in the arcade, the third Isabel, and not daring to continue his broken sentence.

"I have been wondering if you ever translated your name," he remarked, when silence verged on embarrassment. "I have wondered many times if it were just chance that called you so."

"My Mother was Flavia Corwin; I am named for her. What does it mean?" she answered, surprised.

Just for an instant she looked at him, and in the one encounter of glances innocently undid all her reserve had built up. Gerard's color ran up under his clear skin like a girl's, brilliant-eyed, he took a step into the arcade.

"It's too late in the season to tell you out here," he demurred. "I'll send you the translation this evening, if I may. There's something else I'd like to tell you, but I've got to find some civilized clothing, first. Essex lost his head for approaching the Queen in his riding-dress, and I'm risking more. I----"

"Hurry up, you two!" hailed Corrie's injured voice, the ring of his step sounded in the stone arcade. "It's six o'clock now. Come on in."

"I'll come," Gerard answered the summons, again his warm, sparkling gaze caught and held Flavia's as, startled, she raised her head. "I was telling Miss Rose that I must get rid of this road dust. But I wasn't thinking of eating, then."

Scarlet rushed over Flavia's face and neck. As Corrie took gay possession of Gerard and bore him off, she sank back in her chair, winding her fingers hard into the embroidery. Not the omnivorous Isabel's, this! There was nothing to fear, ever again. She had the perfect certainty that Gerard would complete that purpose of his the next time they met. And they would meet in an hour. Suddenly she caught up the drowsy kitten and hid her face against the soft living toy.

They did meet in an hour, but it was on the way to dinner, and the exuberant Corrie held the reins of conversation.

"I've discharged Dean," was his first announcement. "Take those oysters away from in front of me, Perkins; I want my soup right now and a lot of it--about a gallon. Never mind anyone else; I haven't had anything but sandwiches since breakfast."

"Discharged your mechanician one day before the race?" marvelled Gerard. "What will you do?"

"Oh, I'm going out to the garage after dinner to hire him over again. He's used to it. Now, I suppose that if you fired Jack Rupert, you'd never see him again."

"I certainly would not."

"Well, that's the difference. I'm afraid of Rupert, myself. Dean hasn't any dignity."

"Neither have you," observed Isabel bitingly. "You're worse than Dean. I saw you kick Frederick the Great all across the veranda yesterday, then lead him around the kitchen and feed him porterhouse steak."

"That was remorse," Mr. Rose suggested, coolly amused. He looked across at Gerard, as at the only other grown person present. "You'd best take a porterhouse steak to Dean when you go, Corwin B. It's a fine temper you've got."

"All right, sir, if you say it. I guess Dean would eat a porterhouse, if he isn't a Great Dane puppy. But I saw a man to-day in a temper that makes anything I ever did read like a chapter from Patient Griselda."

"He must have been a lunatic," Isabel kindly inferred.

Her cousin put his elbows on the table and contemplated her with mock reproach; looking rather nearer his sixteenth year than his nineteenth in this mood of effervescent gayety. Ever since his interview with Gerard, in the garage that afternoon, his high spirits had been unquenchable.

"You're cross, Isabel," he stated frankly. "Where did you get the grouch? That's a stunning purple frock you've got on."

"It isn't, it's mauve," corrected Isabel, but she smiled and smoothed a chiffon ruffle. "Who was your man, then, Corrie?"

"He was the French driver of the Bluette car, and he came into the judges' stand to make a complaint against another fellow who wouldn't give him the road. Kept getting in front, you know, whenever the Bluette wanted to pass, and cutting it off so it had to fall behind. He was in a French calm, all right, and I don't wonder. But I don't believe anyone could really carry it through, could they, Gerard?"

Gerard roused himself from his study of Flavia, as she sat in her ivory-tinted lace gown at the foot of the table, her small head bent under its weight of gleaming fair hair. The massively handsome room, with its rich hues of gilded leather, mellow Eastern rugs and hangings, carved wood and glinting metal, enchanted him as a background for her dainty youth as if he had never seen it there before or might again. It was difficult for him to look away.

"Carry it through?" he repeated. "Of course, easily."

"Not with some drivers! Not with me!"

"Why not?"

"Because I wouldn't stand it. Because I'd drive through the car ahead if it tried to keep me back. Oh, I'd have them out of my way--you're laughing at me, Allan Gerard!"

Gerard was certainly laughing, and the others with him.