“I would rather you did not call me that,” she told him coldly, “It sounds irreverent.” And she dropped her eyes, which had filled again miserably, to the film of white in her lap. Then, with a pitiful attempt to hurt him in return: “Of course you realize that I really don't know much about you. I don't want you to think that I distrusted you exactly—” she marvelled at herself that she could say such things to him, but went recklessly on. “The check wasn't there,—and so, well, it seemed wisest to wait. They said you were coming back, and I couldn't afford to lose it; so I stayed. Just a matter of business, you see!” She finished in a tone which, except for a suspicious tremble, was satisfactorily disagreeable.
But Blair's armor, since his return, seemed proof against such thrusts as she could give.
“Won't play Indian at all, then?” he retorted teasingly. “But of course not! How could you when you happen to come from the other side of the house? However,” he continued whimsically, “there are such things as English roses, you know. I've always loved them, too, even when they were thorny!”
He pulled absently at a fern growing near, while, suddenly, for no particular reason, the color glowed again in the cheeks of the little art teacher. She smiled, half unwillingly.
“But don't pull up the wild flowers here,” she warned him, “You'll have the forester after you! When did you get back?” she added. “Where have you been so long?” burned on her lips, but she scorned to ask it.
“About an hour ago,” he replied amiably. “The boat was late.”
“I was beginning to think you'd given up coming at all.” She could not keep it back. “The duke never bothered to, you know.”
But this blow, like the first, failed to reach any vulnerable spot. Blair did not flinch.
“No, naturally he didn't! He was English, and you can't depend upon the English, I've discovered. But there's not the slightest reason for linking me up with him. The princess never ran away now, did she? And I—” He paused, then without looking at her he began again.
“Seriously, I'm sorry if I seemed to be deserting. I—well, honestly, I didn't know what else to do. You suggested it yourself, you remember! And I'd promised my father to look after some business for him in Los Angeles while I was out here. You see, he—our family, have lived in the East for a long time now, but we used to own pretty much all of Los Angeles county some three centuries ago, when the Spanish were here, and—” Again he broke off abruptly. “Do you want to know about me?” he demanded.