The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton Page B

set the dimples racing across her face. “Mother said we’d acted like a lot of savages, getting up that circus at the station—and what on earth would you think of us?”
    â€œI think that I shall like you all very much; and you especially, because of those flowers.”
    Nan gave a shy laugh. “Lord Richard said you’d like them.”
    â€œLord Richard?”
    â€œYes. He says in England everybody has a garden, with lots of flowers that smell sweet. And so I stole them from the hotel border.... He’s crazy about Conchita, you know. Do you think she’ll catch him?”
    Miss Testvalley stiffened. She felt her upper lip lengthen, though she tried to smile. “I don’t think it’s a question that need concern us, do you?”
    Nan stared. “Well, she’s my greatest friend—after Jinny, I mean.”
    â€œThen we must wish her something better than Lord Richard. Come, my dear, or those wonderful American griddle-cakes will all be gone.”
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Early in her career Miss Testvalley had had to learn the difficult art of finding her way about—not only as concerned the tastes and temper of the people she lived with, but the topography of their houses. In those old winding English dwellings, half fortress, half palace, where suites and galleries of stately proportions abruptly tapered off into narrow twists and turns, leading to unexpected rooms tucked away in unaccountable corners, and where school-room and nurseries were usually at the far end of the labyrinth, it behoved the governess to blaze her trail by a series of private aids to memory. It was important, in such houses, not only to know the way you were meant to take, but the many you were expected to avoid, and a young governess turning too often down the passage leading to the young gentlemen’s wing, or getting into the way of the master of the house in his dignified descent to the breakfast-room, might suddenly have her services dispensed with. To anyone thus trained, the simple plan of an American summer hotel offered no mysteries; and when supper was over and after a sultry hour or two in the red-and-gold ball-room the St. George ladies ascended to their apartments, Miss Testvalley had no difficulty in finding her way up another flight to her own room. She was already aware that it was in the wing of the hotel, and had noted that from its window she could look across into that from which, before supper, she had seen Miss Closson signal to her brother and Lord Richard, who were smoking on the gravel below.
    It was no business of Miss Testvalley’s to keep watch on what went on in the Closson rooms—or would not have been, she corrected herself, had Nan St. George not spoken of Conchita as her dearest friend. Such a tie did seem to the governess to require vigilance. Miss Closson was herself an unknown quantity, and Lord Richard was only too well known to Miss Testvalley. It was therefore not unnatural that, after silence had fallen on the long corridors of the hotel, the governess, finding sleep impossible in her small suffocating room, should put out her candle and gaze across from her window at that from which she had seen Conchita lean.
    Light still streamed from it, though midnight was past, and presently came laughter, and the twang of Santos-Dios’s guitar, and a burst of youthful voices joining in song. Was her pupil’s among them? Miss Testvalley could not be sure; but soon, detaching itself from Teddy de Santos-Dios’s reedy tenor, she caught the hoarse barytone of another voice.
    Imprudent children! It was bad enough to be gathered at that hour in a room with a young man and a guitar; but at least the young man was Miss Closson’s brother, and Miss Testvalley had noticed, at the supper-table, much exchange of civilities between the St. Georges and the Clossons. But Richard Marable—that was inexcusable, that was scandalous! The hotel would be ringing with it