bent forward and whispered
congratulations to the Major's bride. Her quiet courage in the face of
what she knew perfectly well was a universal knowledge of the true
state of Gilbert's infatuation was good to watch. With his one brief
cold letter in her pocket and Mrs. Jekyll's innuendoes,--"all in the
friendliest spirit,"--raking her heart, her self-control deserved all
the admiration that it won from the members of the house party. To
think that Joan, her friend and schoolfellow in whose loyalty she had
had implicit faith should be the one to take Gilbert away from her.

With shrewd eyes, long accustomed to look below the surface of the thin
veneer of civilization that lay upon his not very numerous set, Hosack
observed and listened for the next half an hour, expecting at any
moment to see Joan burst upon the group or Gilbert make his appearance,
sour, immaculate and with raised eyebrows. He studied Mrs. Jekyll, with
her brilliantly made-up face, her apparent lack of guile, and her
ever-watchful eye. He paid tribute to his copious wife for her
determined babble of generalities, well-knowing that she was bursting
with suppressed excitement under the knowledge that Alice had come to
try and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the
little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves,
her purring voice, her frequent over-emphasis of exuberant adjectives,
her accidental choice of the sort of verb that had the effect of
smashed crockery, her receptiveness to the underlying drama of the
situation and the cunning with which she managed to hide her anxiety to
be "on" in the scene which must inevitably come. He examined his old
friend, Thatcher, under whose perfect drawing-room manners, felicitous
quips and ready laughter there was an almost feminine curiosity as to
scandal and the inadvertent display of the family wash. And, having a
certain amount of humor, he even turned an introspective eye inwards
and owned up to more than a little excitement as to what was going to
happen when Gilbert realized that Mrs. Jekyll had brought his wife over
to rescue him. Conceive Gilbert being rescued! "All of us as near the
primeval as most of us are to lunacy," he told himself. "Education,
wealth, leisure and all the shibboleths of caste and culture,--how
easily they crack and gape before a touch of nature. Brooks Brothers
and Lucile do their derndest to disguise us, but we're still Adam and
Eve in a T