Louise upraised her face to his. It was a simple but eloquent confession that she knew her lips were for him.
"Not as your guardian, I hope, Louise?" said Blythe, putting it in the form of a question.
Her face still upraised and her eyes partly closed, she shook her head; and Blythe, drawing her to him, kissed her full on the lips. Then he quickly released her and took Laura's outstretched hands.
It was the luncheon hour, and Laura had luncheon served in the rooms. They chatted upon little intimate matters quite as if they had been lunching in Laura's New York apartment. Blythe, in fact, mentioned Laura's apartment.
"I met your decorator the other day," he said, "and he wore a very puzzled expression. He told me that you had charged him by cable to do your place over in Tyrian purple, and he was afraid that color would be too dark, or too obtrusive, or something—I forget his exact words."
They knew, however, that his banter was simply a device. Both of the women, taking Blythe's manner as their cue, and observing how pointedly he refrained from asking why he had been sent for, knew at once that he had formed his surmise. Louise, for her part, was awaiting Laura's signal for her to withdraw. When she had gone, Blythe turned a suddenly-sobered face upon Laura.
"It's Jesse, I suppose?" he said to her.
"Yes," said Laura, and she told him of what had happened at the Curzon Street house. Also she told him of Jesse's attempted advances upon Louise in New York.
"I reprove myself now, of course, that I did not tell you at the time about how the man sought to force his attentions upon her in New York," she said, "but you will understand, I know, why I hesitated to tell you. I felt that you would have found it too hard to keep your hands off of him, and I feared to put you to the test. Of course I should have known that you would do nothing, no matter how sorely tempted, that would have involved Louise; but my timidity, I suppose, is of a piece with that of other women in such circumstances."
"Don't worry about that part of it, Laura," said Blythe, consolingly. "You've atoned, if any atonement were necessary, by getting me here now. After all, I could scarcely have taken it upon myself to chastise him in New York. The blackguard did not go quite far enough there, as I understand it, to permit of me getting out on the firing line, even if I had known about it. It is just as well that you waited, for that and some other reasons. There is everything in having a good case," and his face wreathed in a dry sort of a smile which Laura analyzed as boding little good for the man of whom they were speaking.