“It’s no matter,” she said sharply. “Perhaps you lent him your domino? It would be so like you!”
“Now there you’re wrong,” he replied with great affability. “It would not be in the least like me. That domino was wrested from me.”
Her lips curled. “You permitted it? You let him take your place with the girl? That is not very probable!”
“I had no choice in the matter,” he said. “I was eliminated in the neatest possible way. Yes, I said “eliminated”, Caroline.”
“You take it very calmly!” she remarked.
“Naturally,” he replied. “Did you suppose I should gnash my teeth?”
She plucked at the folds of her gown. “Well, are you satisfied? Do you mean to be done with the bride? Is it all over?”
“As far as you are concerned, my dear, I should imagine that it is certainly all over,” he said reflectively. “Not, of course, that I was privileged to witness your meeting with Rule. But I can guess. I am quite acute, you know.”
She abandoned the sarcastic attitude she had adopted, and stretched out her hand. “Oh, Robert, can you not see that I am upset?”
“Easily,” he answered. “So are my plans upset, but I don’t permit that to put me in a taking.”