“Are you not unreasonable?” he suggested quietly, striving to obtain self-justification. “When I speak earnestly—and honestly—you ask me to leave you. When I openly ratify the terms upon which you allow me to remain, you say I jest. I almost despair of ever winning your favor.”
She smiled encouragingly.
“I like you now,” she remarked frankly. “Perhaps, after all, I am not as daring a rebel as I once told you that I was.”
Some one had entered the drawing-room; and turning toward the portière, they saw Percy-Bartlett, his pale face just a shade whiter than usual.
“Good-evening, Stoughton,” he said, coming forward and giving the young man his hand. “Harriet, we ask your indulgence. Shall we smoke here or go into the library?”
Richard’s first inclination was to take his departure at once, but he realized in time the awkwardness that would attend such a step.
“Always the slaves to habit!” cried Mrs. Percy-Bartlett, with a vivacity born of nervous reaction rather than of satisfaction at the contretemps.
“I long ago gave up the idea of defending my music-room from cigar-smoke, Mr. Stoughton. In fact, I have become fond of it. I think,” and she looked at her husband smilingly, but with a gleam of defiance in her eyes, “that I will take to cigarettes. They’re really quite good form in these days, are they not?”
“It is hard to say at present,” remarked Percy-Bartlett, puffing his cigar reflectively, “what is good form and what is not. I confess, Stoughton, that I am rather old-fashioned in my ideas.”
“For instance?” suggested Richard, not wholly at his ease.