“You always look charming. But you don’t want Vance to succeed.”
“I am sure I don’t know why you should think such a thing. Perhaps you don’t think it. I can never tell when you are really in earnest.”
“Strange that you should have noticed that. Others have said it of me, too, at times. But I am very much in earnest this afternoon. It lies in your hands to make Vance fail most conspicuously, you know.”
“You are fond of riddles, and I am not. I wish you would be more explicit.”
Carfax stole a glance aside at his veranda companion and it was borne in upon him that he would have to choose his words carefully. The slate-blue eyes had grown a trifle hard, and Miss Richardia’s tone was no longer sympathetic.
“Vance can’t mix business and sentiment very well,” he ventured. “He has been spending a good bit of time here at Highmount, forgetting some things that he ought to remember. Surely you have discovered his one weakness by this time, haven’t you?” he went on, gravely pleading. “Not that it isn’t tremendously excusable in the present instance, you know. You—er—you are enough to turn any man’s head, Miss Richardia; you are, indeed.”
Her little shriek of laughter was sufficient to break any thin skim of ice which may have been congealing between them.
“You can be quite as absurd as Mr. Vance, himself, when you try!” she mocked. Then, with the frankness which was all her own: “Are you trying to tell me that I have been playing the part of a modern Delilah, Mr. Carfax!”
“Oh, dear, no! But”—he swallowed hard once or twice, and then took the plunge—“but Vance simply couldn’t help falling in love with you. Er—hardly any man could. And it’s—it’s smashing him to perfection. I don’t say that he is admitting the—the little lapse, even to himself; he is too honorable to do that, after he has given his word to Eliz—to Miss Wardwell. But the fact remains.”
Miss Richardia laughed again, but now the laugh scarcely rang true.