She pressed her lips together and fled through the hall to her own room, to shut and lock herself in. He stared in amazement. When he heard the distant sound of the turning key he dropped to a chair again and laughed. Certainly women were queer creatures—always doing what one didn't expect. Still, in the end—well, a sensible woman knew a good chance to marry and took it. There was no doubt a good deal of pretense in Mildred's delicacy as to money matters—but a devilish creditable sort of pretense. He liked the ladylike, "nice" pretenses, of women of the right sort—liked them when they fooled him, liked them when they only half fooled him.
Presently he knocked on the door of the little library, opened it when permission came in Cyrilla's voice. She was reading the evening paper—he did not see the glasses she hastily thrust into a drawer. In that soft light she looked a scant thirty, handsome, but for his taste too intellectual of type to be attractive—except as a friend.
"Well," said he, as he lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the big copper ash-bowl, "I'll bet you can't guess what I've been up to."
"Making love to Miss Stevens," replied she. "And very foolish it is of you. She's got a steady head in that way."
"You're mighty right," said he heartily. "And I admire her for that more than for anything else. I'd trust her anywhere."
"You're paying yourself a high compliment," laughed Cyrilla.
"How's that?" inquired he. "You're too subtle for me. I'm a bit slow."
Mrs. Brindley decided against explaining. It was not wise to risk raising an unjust doubt in the mind of a man who fancied that a woman who resisted him would be adamant to every other man. "Then I've got to guess again?" said she.
"I've been asking her to marry me," said Stanley, who could contain it no longer. "Mrs. B. was released from me to-day by the court in Providence."
"But SHE'S not free," said Cyrilla, a little severely.