He'd done it before....
She admitted that herself.
She practically admitted that the fellow made love to her on the way home.
No doubt he was doing it again at that moment! Captain Ross could picture it. He did picture it....
Nothing could have been less like his picture than the reality of that proposal scene in the railway carriage of the train held up outside Willesden Junction at that moment, but how should this jealous brooder be expected to guess that?
He continued to brood so intently that it is unlikely he heard any of the firing....
That little hussy! How was it she always contrived to irritate him so? Always! Every time she spoke! The more meek and mild she was in the office the more downright impairrrtinence she managed to infuse, somehow, into the very meekness and mildness of the tone in which she spoke to her chief. Yep! Even if she were only putting somebody through to him on the telephone, she managed to convey an impression of—of—of something.
And why any busy man should waste a moment thinking of her the finest judge of women in Europe did not know.... How had she done it?
Yes; she was pretty; confound her! Awfully neat.... but weren't other girls? Why think of her, more than of all the others, dozens, scores, yes, hundreds of 'em that he'd known? What he demanded of a girl's society was that it should be kept in its right proporrrrtion as a relaxation for when a man wasn't occupied with a job.
Woman, it could not too often be reiterated, was the Plaything of Man——but not of young Ellerton, by the way. Why should any sensible man be obsessed by one more than another of these toys?