"There is another of your failings, Kenneth. You haven't always the courage of your convictions. What you are thinking is that I am a spiteful little cat. Why don't you say it out loud, like a man?"
"Because I'm not thinking it," he denied, adding: "But I do think you are a little inclined to be unfair to Miss Charlotte."
"Am I? Let us see if I am. I accuse her of nothing but a slavish devotion to custom and the conventions. What did she say when you read her the chapter before this one: where Fidelia goes down to the dining-room at midnight and finds Fleming breaking into the silver-safe where the money is hidden?"
"I'm not reading the story to her," he admitted, and again she laughed.
"But you do talk it over with her; you couldn't help doing that," she persisted.
"Sometimes," he allowed.
"Well, what did she say when you came to that part where Fidelia makes Fleming sit down while she tries to convince him that house-breaking is a crime. You don't dare tell me what she said."
Griswold did it, with a firm convincement that he was thereby breaking a sacred confidence. But the alluring lips and eyes were irresistible when he was fairly within their influence.
"I merely suggested the scene as something that might be done," he explained. "She did not approve of it. Her objection was that the Fidelias in real life don't do such things."
"They don't," was Miss Margery's flippant agreement. "And your letting your Fidelia do it is the one redeeming thing you have done in your drawing of her. Just the same, with all your ingenuity you leave one with the firm conviction that she will never, under any circumstances, do such an unconventional thing again; never, never, never! And that is a false note."