"No," she responded half-absently; and thereupon he gave the little car still more spark and throttle and sent it flying over the final stretch of the fine road to the city.
The electric lights were showing like faint yellow stars against the sunset sky when Blount skilfully placed the small car at the Inter-Mountain curb and lifted his companion to the sidewalk
"Are you going anywhere to-night?" he asked.
"I don't know," was the reply. "There is a 'crush' on at the Weatherfords', but I don't know whether Mrs. Blount has accepted for us or not."
"Don't go," he pleaded quickly. "Back out of it some way, and give me just this one evening to myself. Won't you do that, Patricia?"
"I'll try," she agreed. "But if Mrs. Blount has accepted—"
"Confound Mrs. Blount!" he growled. And then the newly aroused underman in him added: "You tell her that I want you to give me the evening, and let that settle it."
As it turned out a little later, Miss Anners found it unnecessary to be rude to her hostess. For some reason best known to herself, Mrs. Honoria had declined the invitation—engraved in the correctest shaded Old English and made to include the senator and Miss Anners—and was planning a free evening for herself and her guest.
After the café dinner—a dinner at which Evan Blount, once more calling himself all the hard names in the hypocrite's vocabulary, made the fourth—Mrs. Honoria proposed an adjournment to the hotel parlors, which were in the mezzanine lounge. Later, she found herself alone on the divan which had been drawn up to command a view of the spirited scene in the lobby below. The senator had gone down to mingle with the politicians, and she could see him—big, masterful, and smiling—moving about from group to group. On the opposite side of the mezzanine gallery, Evan and Patricia were "doing time," as the little lady musingly phrased it: walking up and down and talking quietly; a handsome couple, as the approving glances of more than one passing guest testified.
To Mrs. Honoria, thus isolated, came at the appointed time the sober-eyed young traffic manager for the railroad company. Gantry had been under orders from the little lady for the better part of the afternoon, but the business of the day had given him no chance to report earlier.