“Oh! As you please, of course. I’ll be detained until Tuesday. You do look tired,” he added solicitously. “But I shall miss you abominably. Couldn’t you shut yourself up here and rest?”
“I want my old manor more than anything in the world!” she said passionately. “And I must be alone.”
He stifled both astonishment and curiosity. “Then you shall have it, or anything else you want. Sit down for a moment and have a cigarette.” And Gita, who had no desire for the solitude of her bed, obeyed him.
“I shall have to sleep on that davenport,” he said humorously. “Three of my friends are dead to the world upstairs.”
“Beasts.”
“ ’Fraid it’s bootlegger gin.” And then he slipped on the harness of his new rôle. “I saw you hidden in a corner with De Witt Turner for at least a quarter of an hour,” he said with a nice assumption of jealousy. “Women fall for him very hard, you know.”
“Do they? They must be fools. I hate him.”
Bylant raised his brows in genuine surprise. “Hate old Witt? He’s about the least hatable man in New York, I should think.”
“Well, I can’t endure him and I’m not going to ask him to one of the house-parties.”
“Did he make love to you?”