A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here.
"It's just as we wanted it," he went on.
The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she said curtly.
Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil," said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at college——"
There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be nice to him, Courtney?—and help him and Helen along? They were intended for each other—height—contrast of coloring——"
Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His expression— That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room.
"You are—beautiful!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of——"
Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not locking her doors into the hall.
"Of charm—aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most girls, I imagine."
She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new life!