"Why, Bernadette——!" he began in shocked remorse.
"Yes, I know," she interrupted petulantly. "Well, you frightened me. I'm—I'm not used to things like that." Then she too saw the startling frock. "Look at that, Sir Oliver! I don't believe I should ever dare to wear it!"
"I fancy it's meant to appeal to ladies of another sort."
"Is it? Don't they wear just what we do? Well, just a little more so, perhaps!" She stood eyeing the gown with a whimsical smile. "It is rather naughty, isn't it?" She moved on again. He watched her face now. She had wiped away the tear, no more came; she was smiling, not brightly, but yet with a pensive amusement. Presently she asked him a question.
"By what you said there—in the café, you know—did you mean that you wanted me to run away with you?"
He was rather surprised at her returning to the subject. "I meant that I wanted to take you away with me. There'd be no running about it."
"What, to do it,—openly?"
"Anything else wouldn't be at all according to my ideas. Still——" He shrugged his shoulders again; he was not sure whether, under stress of temptation, he would succeed in holding to his point.
She began to laugh, but stopped hastily when she saw that he looked angry. "Oh, but you are absurd, you really are," she told him in a gentle soothing fashion.
"I don't see that anybody could call it absurd," he remarked, frowning. "Some good folk would no doubt call it very wicked."