Or was her future to be cast among those who moved in the world and helped to sway it? Cynthia felt that she was to be of these, though she could not reason why, and she told herself that the feeling was foolish. Perhaps it was that she knew in the bottom of her heart that she had been given a spirit and intelligence to cope with a larger life than that of Coniston. With a sense that such imaginings were vain, she tried to think what the would do if she were to become a great lady like Mrs. Duncan.
She was aroused from these reflections by a distant glimpse, through the trees, of Mr. Robert Worthington. He was standing quite alone on the edge of the park, his hands in his pockets, staring at the White House. Cynthia half rose, and then sat down and looked at him again. He wore a light gray, loose-fitting suit and a straw hat, and she could not but acknowledge that there was something stalwart and clean and altogether appealing in him. She wondered, indeed, why he now failed to appeal to Miss Duncan, and she began to doubt the sincerity of that young lady's statements. Bob certainly was not romantic, but he was a man--or would be very soon.
Cynthia sat still, although her impulse was to go away. She scarcely analyzed her feeling of wishing to avoid him. It may not be well, indeed, to analyze them on paper too closely. She had an instinct that only pain could come from frequent meetings, and she knew now what but a week ago was a surmise, that he belonged to the world of which she had been dreaming--Mrs. Duncan's world. Again, there was that mysterious barrier between them of which she had seen so many evidences. And yet she sat still on her bench and looked at him.
Presently he turned, slowly, as if her eyes had compelled his. She sat still--it was too late, then. In less than a minute he was standing beside her, looking down at her with a smile that had in it a touch of reproach.
"How do you do, Mr. Worthington?" said Cynthia, quietly.
"Mr. Worthington!" he cried, "you haven't called me that before. We are not children any more," she said.
"What difference does that make?"
"A great deal," said Cynthia, not caring to define it.
"Cynthia," said Mr. Worthington, sitting down on the beach and facing her, "do you think you've treated me just right?"
"Of course I do," she said, "or I should have treated you differently."
Bob ignored such quibbling.
"Why did you run away from that baseball game in Brampton? And why couldn't you have answered my letter yesterday, if it were only a line? And why have you avoided me here in Washington?"
It is very difficult to answer for another questions which one cannot answer for one's self.
"I haven't avoided you," said Cynthia.
"I've been looking for you all over town this morning," said Bob, with pardonable exaggeration, "and I believe that idiot Somers has, too."
"Then why should you call him an idiot?" Cynthia flashed.
Bob laughed.
"How you do catch a fellow up!" said he; admiringly. "We both found out you'd gone out for a walk alone."
"How did you find it out?"
"Well," said Bob, hesitating, "we asked the colored doorkeeper."
"Mr. Worthington," said Cynthia, with an indignation that made him quail, "do you think it right to ask a doorkeeper to spy on my movements?"
"I'm sorry, Cynthia," he gasped, "I--I didn't think of it that way--and he won't tell. Desperate cases require desperate remedies, you know."
But Cynthia was not appeased.
"If you wanted to see me," she said, "why didn't you send your card to my room, and I would have come to the parlor."
"But I did send a note, and waited around all day."
How was she to tell him that it was to the tone of the note she objected--to the hint of a clandestine meeting? She turned the light of her eyes full upon him.
"Would you have been content to see me in the parlor?" she asked. "Did you mean to see me there?"
"Why, yes," said he; "I would have given my head to see you anywhere, only--"
"Only what?"
"Duncan might have came in and spoiled it."
"Spoiled what?"
Bob fidgeted.
"Look here, Cynthia," he said, "you're not stupid--far from it. Of course you know a fellow would rather talk to you alone."
"I should have been very glad to have seen Mr. Duncan, too."
"You would, would you!" he exclaimed. "I shouldn't have thought that."
"Isn't he your friend?" asked Cynthia.
"Oh, yes," said Bob, "and one of the best in the world. Only--I shouldn't have thought you'd care to talk to him." And he looked around for fear the vigilant Mr. Duncan was already in the park and had discovered them. Cynthia smiled, and immediately became grave again.
"So it was only on Mr. Duncan's account that you didn't ask me to come down to the parlor?" she said.
Bob was in a quandary. He was a truthful person, and he had learned something of the world through his three years at Cambridge. He had seen many young women, and many kinds of them. But the girl beside him was such a mixture of innocence and astuteness that he was wholly at a loss how to deal with her--how to parry her searching questions.
"Naturally--I wanted to have you all to myself," he said; "you ought to know that."
Cynthia did not commit herself on this point. She wished to go mercilessly to the root of the matter, but the notion of what this would imply prevented her. Bob took advantage of her silence.
"Everybody who sees you falls a victim, Cynthia," he went on; "Mrs. Duncan and Janet lost their hearts. You ought to have heard them praising you at breakfast." He paused abruptly, thinking of the rest of that conversation, and laughed. Bob seemed fated to commit himself that day. "I heard the way you handled Heth Sutton," he said, plunging in. "I'll bet he felt as if he'd been dropped out of the third-story window," and Bob laughed again. "I'd have given a thousand dollars to have been there. Somers and I went out to supper with a classmate who lives in Washington, in that house over there," and he pointed casually to one of the imposing mansions fronting on the park. "Mrs. Duncan said she'd never heard anybody lay it on the way you did. I don't believe you half know what happened, Cynthia. You made a ten-strike."
"A ten-strike?" she repeated.
"Well," he said, "you not only laid out Heth, but my father and Mr. Duncan, too. Mrs. Duncan laughed at 'em--she isn't afraid of anything. But they didn't say a word all through breakfast. I've never seen my father so mad. He ought to have known better than to run up against Uncle Jethro."
"How did they run up against Uncle Jethro?" asked Cynthia, now keenly interested.
"Don't you know?" exclaimed Bob, in astonishment.
"No," said Cynthia, "or I shouldn't have asked."
"Didn't Uncle Jethro tell you about it?"
"He never tells me anything about his affairs," she answered.
Bob's astonishment did not wear off at once. Here was a new phase, and