"To tell you the truth, I have to fight all the time against becoming too fond of him," I returned mockingly. "He can be dangerously fascinating, you know."
Dicky laughed in a way that showed me his brainstorm over Robert Gordon had been checked. But there was a startled look in his eyes which changed to a more speculative scrutiny before he moved away.
"Oh, old Harry's all right," he said. "He's my pal, and he never means anything, anyway." But I noticed that he said it as if he were trying to convince himself of the truth of his assertion.
When I told Harry Underwood that he was to take me in to dinner, and we were leading the way into the dining room, his brilliant black eyes looked down into mine mockingly, and he said:
"You see it is Fate. No matter how you struggle against it you cannot escape me."
"Do I look as if I were struggling?" I laughed back, and saw a sudden expression of bewilderment in his eyes, followed instantly by a flash of triumph.
Everything that was cattishly feminine in me leaped to life at that look in the eyes of the man whom I detested, whom I had even feared. I could read plainly enough in his eyes that he thought the assiduous flatteries he had always paid me were commencing to have their result, that I was beginning to recognize the dangerous fascination he was reputed to have for women of every station. I had a swift, savage desire to avenge the women he must have made suffer, to hurt him as before dinner he had wounded Lillian.
So instead of turning an impassive face to Mr. Underwood's remark, I listened with just the hint of an elusive mischievous smile twisting my lips.
"No, you don't look very uncomfortable. You look"—he caught his breath as if with some emotion too strong for utterance, and then said a trifle huskily:
"Will you let me tell you how you look to me?"