“This is my first time here,” he went on, “but it isn’t to be the last, I hope. What good taste you have, Nellie! It’s a corking little nest.”
“I just can’t go out to Tarrytown every night,” she explained. “I must have a place in town.”
“By the way,” he said, more at ease than he had been, “you spoke of going to Tarrytown 45 on Sunday. Let me take you out in the motor. I’d like to see this husband chap of yours and the little girl, if––”
“Nay, nay,” she said, shaking her head. “I never mix my public affairs with my private ones. You are a public affair, if there ever was one. No, little Nellie will go out on the choo-choos.” She laughed suddenly, as if struck by a funny thought. Then, very seriously, she said:—“I don’t know what Harvey would do to you if he caught you with me.”
He stiffened. “Jealous, eh?”
“Wildly!”
“A fire-eater?”
“He’s a perfect devil,” said Nellie, with the straightest face imaginable.
Fairfax smiled in a superior sort of way, flecked the ashes from his cigarette, and leaned back in his chair the better to contemplate the charming creature at his side. He thoroughly approved of jealous husbands. The fellow who isn’t jealous, he argued, is the hardest to trifle with.
“I suppose you adore him,” he said, with a thinly veiled sneer. 46