"Perhaps he wants to keep his eye on me, too. He doesn't trust me further than he can see me, you know."
Without looking at him or seeming to listen to his words, she asked, in low, indignant tones,
"How dare he come?"
Willie Ruston opened his eyes. He did not understand so much emotion spent on such a trifle. Say it was bad taste in Loring to come, or an impertinence! Well, it was not a tragedy at all events. He was almost angry with her for giving importance to it; and the importance she gave set him wondering. But before he could translate his feeling into words, she turned to him, leaning across the table that stood between them, and clasping her hands.
"I can't bear to have him here now," she murmured.
"What harm will he do? You needn't see anything of him," rejoined Ruston, more astonished at each new proof of disquietude in her.
But Tom Loring was not to be so lightly dismissed from her mind; and she did not seem to heed when Ruston added, with a laugh,
"You got rid of him once, didn't you? I should think you could again."
"Ah, then! That was different."
He looked at her curiously. She was agitated, but there seemed to be more than agitation. As he read it, it was fear; and discerning it, he spoke in growing surprise and rising irritation.