“But come,” he urged with an apparent desire to change the subject, “aren’t you going to play for me?”
She shook her head. A spirit of contrariness prompted her to tantalise him, to make this audacious, dandified czar of the big timber feel ill at ease.
“I had taken it for granted I was to be entertained,” she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at the conceit of the tiny, scintillating white diamond in his tie.
But even in his present playful mood Acey Smith had his nimble wits with him. “To-morrow is your birthday,” he observed irrelevantly, his flashing black orbs resting on hers momentarily. “You will be twenty-one and have reached a woman’s estate.”
It was she who was caught perplexed. “How—how did you know that?” she cried.
“The proverbial little bird must have been tattling to me. At any rate, it just now struck me that this being the eve of so important an anniversary your slightest whim should be gratified.”
“Meaning what?” She was trying hard to feign indifference.
“That I must entertain you as you have insisted.”
She watched him stride across the room. She thought at first he was going to the piano; instead he leant over the back of the instrument and brought up a black case from which he extracted a violin and bow.
“Now, what shall it be?” he asked with the bow poised.