He looked after her, flushed and angry. He had come to the house with the deliberate intention of telling her that he did not care to take her driving any more, or to continue their further intimate acquaintance, and had half-broken down in it because of her beauty and evident distress. Dade Morgan loved himself better than anything else in the world, and his self-pride had been hurt. Some way he did not feel as care-free about the matter as he had fancied he would. He had never cared for Rosalind Thornton, and had used her merely as a weapon with which to strike Starbright, but this was somewhat like the weapon striking back at him when he sought to discard it.
Yet he did not try to speak to her again, though a strange and fiery light came into his eyes, which, through force of habit, he besought to conceal. Then he put on his hat, opened the door without saying “Good night!” and was soon trailing down the street after the person he had fancied was Dick Starbright.
“Well, she’s off my hands!” he reflected, as he hurried on. “I guess it’s better that way, though she is deucedly handsome, and I might come to like her in time, if I could ever like anybody! But that finishes it, unless I really want to go back. I think I can do that, if I care to try the trick. Likely I sha’n’t care to try it. I wonder if that was Starbright? It would be a joke if she’s been playing double, and Starbright has been calling here all the time. But, no, he wouldn’t do that. Starbright isn’t a chump, whatever else he is!”
He failed to see Starbright or any one resembling him.
“Taken an electric for down-town, I suppose!”
Then his thoughts went back to Rosalind.
“Umph! Women cry easily; but crying sometimes makes them pretty!”
Hurt, angered, humiliated, Rosalind had rushed into her room, thrown herself on her bed, and was crying as if her foolish little heart were about to break.