"I do wish you would not say these things. I have to try very hard not to dislike you exceedingly when you speak in this way."
"You do dislike me exceedingly when I speak in this way. I know it perfectly."
If her voice trembled the least bit it was with indignation. "I sometimes ask myself whether I should suffer it even for my husband's sake. You will force me to do something unpleasant, I fear."
"I never will force you to do anything. I do want to call you Alice. But don't hate me for that."
She heard with relief Dolly talking to her husband in the doorway. "It was almost three years before Imogene saw Charles again," Alice heard Dolly say, "and, would you believe it, he began exactly where he left off. After that Imogene decided it was of no use. So, she is Mrs. Kimberly!"
"By Jove! He had patience," laughed MacBirney.
Dolly laughed a little, too. "That is the only exasperating thing about the Kimberly men--their patience."
CHAPTER XIX
MacBirney's decision to spend the winter in town became very welcome to Alice; the atmosphere within a wide radius of The Towers seemed too charged with electricity for mental peace. And her husband, having tasted for the first time the excitement of the stock markets, desired to be near his brokers.
Fritzie, who was an authority in town affairs, made it easy for Alice to find acceptable quarters. In general the Second Lake people cared less and less for opening their town houses. Robert Kimberly's house, while nominally open, never saw its master. Charles and Imogene Kimberly for several years had spent their winters cruising and now made ready to take Grace De Castro to the eastern Mediterranean. Arthur and Dolly were to winter at Biarritz and join Charles and Imogene in Sicily on their return from the Levant. Fritzie accepted Alice's invitation to spend the season in town with her. Dora Morgan had already gone to Paris for an indefinite stay and the Nelsons, Congress being in session, were starting for Washington.