"And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid itself—or went out and hanged itself?"
He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this very chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in full view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words—a deep, round chuckle it was.
"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield where I could see it and breakfast too."
"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of a boudoir."
"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself.
"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?"
"Not so good a breakfast as I got."
"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while at all.
"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I give up. I can't talk in your way."
"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her eyes.