"N—o. But I dare say he will turn up by-and-by. Why?" with a quick glance at him from under her heavy lashes. "Do you want him?"
"Certainly not. I don't want him," said Roger, with exceeding emphasis upon the pronoun.
"Then I don't know anybody else who does," finishes Dulce, biting her lips.
"She is regularly piqued because the fellow hasn't turned up—a lover's quarrel, I suppose," says Mr. Dare, savagely, to himself, reading wrongly that petulant movement of her lips.
"You do!" he says. To be just to him, he is, and always, I think, will be, a terribly outspoken young man.
"I do?"
"Yes; you looked decidedly cut up just now when I spoke of his not being here since yesterday."
"You are absurdly mistaken," declares Miss Blount, with dignity. "It is a matter of the most perfect indifference to me whether he comes or goes." (Oh, if he could only know how true this is!)
"Even more piqued than I supposed," concludes Roger, inwardly.
"However, I have no doubt we shall see him this evening," goes on Dulce, calmly.