"Do I?" Caroline laughed. "Mrs. Timberlake is a very sensible woman."
"Yes, mother insists that she is as sharp as a needle, even if it is so hard to get anything out of her. Oh, I've kept you an age—and, good Heavens, it is long past my appointment at the dentist's! I can't tell you how glad I am that I met you, and you may be sure that whenever I hear these things repeated, I am going to say that you don't believe one single word of them. It is splendid of you to stand up for what you think, and that reminds me of the nice things I heard Roane Fitzhugh saying about you at the Mallow's the other night. He simply raved over you. I couldn't make him talk about anything else."
"I don't like to be disagreeable, but what he thinks doesn't interest me in the least," rejoined Caroline coldly.
Daisy laughed delightedly. "Now, that's too bad, because I believe he is falling in love with you. He told me he went motoring with you and Angelica almost every afternoon. Take my word for it, Miss Meade, Roane isn't half so black as he is painted, and he's just the sort that would settle down when he met the right woman. Good-bye again! I have enjoyed so much my little chat with you."
She rushed off to her car, while Caroline turned quickly into a cross street, and hastened to meet Angelica at the office of a new doctor, who was treating her throat. A few drops of rain were falling, and ahead of her, when she reached Franklin Street, the city, with its church spires and leafless trees, emerged indistinctly out of the mist. Here the long street was almost deserted, except for a blind negro beggar, whose stick tapped the pavement behind her, and a white and liver-coloured setter nosing adventurously in the gutter. Then, in the middle of the block, she saw Angelica's car waiting, and a minute later, to her disgust, she discerned the face of Roane Fitzhugh at the window. As she recognized him, the anger that Mrs. Colfax's casual words had aroused, blazed up in her without warning; and she told herself that she would leave Briarlay before she would allow herself to be gossiped about with a man she detested.
While she approached, Roane opened the door and jumped out. "Come inside and wait, Miss Meade," he said. "Anna Jeannette is still interviewing old skull and cross-bones."
"I'd rather wait in the office, thank you." She swept past him with dignity, but before she reached the steps of the doctor's house, he had overtaken her.
"Oh, I say, don't crush a chap! Haven't you seen enough of me yet to discover that I am really as harmless as I look? You don't honestly think me a rotter, do you?"
"I don't think about you."
"The unkindest cut of all! Now, if you only knew it, your thinking of me would do a precious lot of good. By the way, how is my niece?"