"That was remorse," Mr. Rose suggested, coolly amused. He looked across at Gerard, as at the only other grown person present. "You'd best take a porterhouse steak to Dean when you go, Corwin B. It's a fine temper you've got."
"All right, sir, if you say it. I guess Dean would eat a porterhouse, if he isn't a Great Dane puppy. But I saw a man to-day in a temper that makes anything I ever did read like a chapter from Patient Griselda."
"He must have been a lunatic," Isabel kindly inferred.
Her cousin put his elbows on the table and contemplated her with mock reproach; looking rather nearer his sixteenth year than his nineteenth in this mood of effervescent gayety. Ever since his interview with Gerard, in the garage that afternoon, his high spirits had been unquenchable.
"You're cross, Isabel," he stated frankly. "Where did you get the grouch? That's a stunning purple frock you've got on."
"It isn't, it's mauve," corrected Isabel, but she smiled and smoothed a chiffon ruffle. "Who was your man, then, Corrie?"
"He was the French driver of the Bluette car, and he came into the judges' stand to make a complaint against another fellow who wouldn't give him the road. Kept getting in front, you know, whenever the Bluette wanted to pass, and cutting it off so it had to fall behind. He was in a French calm, all right, and I don't wonder. But I don't believe anyone could really carry it through, could they, Gerard?"
Gerard roused himself from his study of Flavia, as she sat in her ivory-tinted lace gown at the foot of the table, her small head bent under its weight of gleaming fair hair. The massively handsome room, with its rich hues of gilded leather, mellow Eastern rugs and hangings, carved wood and glinting metal, enchanted him as a background for her dainty youth as if he had never seen it there before or might again. It was difficult for him to look away.
"Carry it through?" he repeated. "Of course, easily."
"Not with some drivers! Not with me!"