"Oh, it is not that I am tired of your society," poor Maurice put in eagerly.
"If I were a man," his hostess went on, "I never would let a woman see that I minded how she treated me. You'd soon have her coming down from her high horse if you showed her that you didn't care."
Maurice flushed painfully. It was impossible for him to talk to Mrs.
Wilson about his feeling for Berenice.
"I am afraid that I had better go," he said, with eyes abased.
She regarded him with a mixture of impatience and amusement struggling in her face.
"By all means go," she retorted. "I'll tell Patrick to be at the door in time to take you to the three o'clock train."
She swept away rather brusquely, leaving him disconsolate and uneasy.
He felt that he had bungled matters; but before he had time to consider
Berenice appeared, and joined him on the piazza.
"I am sent by Mrs. Wilson," she announced, "to ask you to stay."
"You take some pains to clear yourself from the suspicion of having any interest in the matter."
"'I am only a messenger,'" she quoted saucily, seating herself on the rail of the piazza in the sunshine, and looking so piquant that Maurice felt resolution and resentment oozing out of his mind with fatal rapidity.