"What do you mean?" she demanded. "What place?"
"Only the box seat in my heart."
"Heart!" she repeated with a scornful laugh. "No one talks of hearts in these days—except the heroes of stories in penny magazines."
As she spoke Dominga rose, and drew herself to her full height. She was two inches taller than Jimmy, who gazed at her in profound admiration. Yes; already he was caught and enthralled by her audacity and insolence, and entangled in the meshes of her splendid burnished hair.
"Dom," said Verona as she joined her, "it is past six o'clock, and we must be going home."
"Very well," assented Dominga, "I am ready." But she did not attempt to make her sister and "Jimmy" known to one another. No, she would not share the captive of her bow and spear—that is to say, eye and tongue—she was determined to keep him exclusively to herself. (Dom knew what girls did, being a most daring and successful poacher!)
Jimmy stared at this Miss Chandos, who looked and spoke like a well-bred English lady, and yet was Dominga's own sister. What did it mean? Dom, with all her charm, spoke with a quaint, half-foreign accent, and her manners decidedly lacked the repose which stamped the caste of Vere de Vere, whilst Verona—the other girl, "the slow one," as he already classed her, was Vere de Vere—and no mistake!
As Dominga crossed the polo ground attended by her new slave, she tossed her head and flounced her skirts, and glared at spectators as much as to say, "Don't you wish you were in my shoes?" When she stepped into the victoria she leant forward, and smiled with cruel exultation at the Watkins and the Trotters—they could not fail to have seen "the Honourable" tucking the dust cover over her knees. They knew that she had got into society at last!
As Dominga was driven homewards her body was unquestionably in the shabby victoria, but her mind was in the seventh heaven!
"He" had chosen her out from among all the women in the station. "He" had called her "Dom," and, at parting, had given her fingers a fierce, emphatic squeeze, from the effects of which they were still tingling!