“I am glad to see 'that fellow' here,” she went on. “He is a gentleman, and he is n't stupid. No one else comes here who is so amusing. I am tired of Brown & Company.”
“Ah!” he answered, biting his lip. He felt the rebuff, if it was only Mollie who gave it. “Very well then, if you are tired of Brown & Company, and would prefer to enter into partnership with Chandos, it is none of my business, I suppose. I will give you one warning, however, because I promised your sister to take care of you.” Her skin flamed scarlet at that. “That fellow is not a gentleman exactly, and he is a very dangerous acquaintance for any woman to make.”
“He is a friend of yours,” she interrupted.
“That is a natural mistake on your part,” he replied,—"natural, but still a mistake. He is not a friend of mine. As I before observed, he is not exactly a gentleman—not to put too fine a point upon it—from a moral point of view. We won't discuss the matter further.”
They had parted bad friends that night. Mollie was restive under his cool decisiveness for various reasons; he was irritated because he felt he had failed, and had lost ground instead of gaining it. So sometimes since, he had fancied that she had not wholly forgiven him, and yet there were times when she was so softly submissive that he felt himself in some slight danger of being as much touched and as fairly bewitched as he was when Dolly turned her attention to him. Still she was frequently far from amiable, and upon more than one occasion he found her not precisely as polite as she might have been.
“You are not as amiable, Mollie,” he said to her once, “as you used to be. We were very good friends in the old days. I suppose you are outgrowing me. I should be afraid to offer you a bunch of camellias now as a token of my affection.”
He smiled down at her indolently as he said it, and before he had finished he began to feel uncomfortable. Her eyelids drooped and her head drooped, and she looked sweetly troubled.
“I know I am not as good as I used to be,” she admitted. “I know it without being told. Sometimes,” very suddenly, “I think I must be growing awfully wicked.”
“Well,” he commented, “at least one must admit that is a promising state of mind, and augurs well for future repentance.”
She shook her head.