“Nothing at all,” she said, sweeping her eyes over his a moment, and resting them on the plants.
“I must have uttered something that has displeased you.”
“No.”
Brief negatives are not re-assuring to a lover’s uneasy mind.
“I beg you—Be frank with me, Rose!”
A flame of the vanished fire shone in her face, but subsided, and she shook her head darkly.
“Have you any objection to my friend?”
Her fingers grew petulant with an orange leaf. Eyeing a spot on it, she said, hesitatingly:
“Any friend of yours I am sure I should like to help. But—but I wish you wouldn’t associate with that—that kind of friend. It gives people all sorts of suspicions.”
Evan drew a sharp breath.