“How stupid you are!” cried the little woman, who seldom failed to display either real or assumed enthusiasm regarding any given topic of conversation. Turning in her saddle, she looked back, and saw that Kate Strong was wheeling steadily forward a hundred yards to their rear. “But what else could I expect? All men are stupid about certain matters. Of course your sister is interested in Count Szalaki. So am I. I am wild to see the boy. From what you both say of him, he must be simply irresistible.”
Ned Strong frowned and impatiently increased the speed of his wheel. He knew how to withstand the coquetry of a young girl, but the “in-and-out running of a widow,” as he called it to himself, kept him in a state of nervous worry most of the time.
“I suppose,” he remarked crossly, “that what a man needs in these days to make him interesting are black curly hair and an air of mystery. In that case I’m out of it completely.”
Mrs. Brevoort laughed aloud.
“What a jealous creature you are, Mr. Strong! Your wife will have a sad life of it, unless she is a very clever woman.”
“I don’t intend to marry,” remarked the youth sternly. “What a fool I’d be to sell my birthright for a mess of affectation! And that’s what a woman is to-day—simply a mess of affectation.”
“What an elegant expression!” cried Mrs. Brevoort, a gleam of malice in her laughing eyes as she looked up at the youth, who was gazing stubbornly forward and pushing the pedals of his wheel as though he had suffered a great wrong and was obliged to work for his living. “But it does you credit, Mr. Strong. It indicates on your part a remote but more or less intimate acquaintance with biblical lore.”
“But there’s one thing certain,” continued the young man, not heeding her sarcasm, “and that is that if I should marry I would not tie myself down to a silly girl who might at any moment meet a curly-haired man with a title and leave me in the lurch.”
Mrs. Brevoort laughed mockingly.
“How self-confident you are, little boy!” she exclaimed. “Let me tell you, sir, it is my opinion that you will marry a blue-eyed, golden-haired young doll, who will make you believe that you are the most wonderful man on earth and that she is the happiest woman. I can see it all in my mind’s eye. You prize your freedom, as you think, more than most men. It is just your kind that fall victims to the sweet-faced, blond-haired little vixens who make the most tyrannical wives in the world. Do you like the prediction?”