"You don't look it—except in your eye. I think I do see there the gleam of a desperate resolve." He bent over her devotedly as he put her in her chair, noting the effect on the young gentlemen who had been too slothful to leave the car, but who now, as he had predicted to himself, were "sitting up," both physically and mentally, as they covertly eyed his new travelling companion. "I admit it takes courage for a New England girl to start out to meet a barbarian from the wilds of South America, unchaperoned except by a perfectly good brother."
"If I could be sure the brother would be perfectly good—" she suggested, smiling at him as she slightly altered the position of her chair so that the attentive fellow-travellers were moved out of her line of vision.
"I'm sworn to rigorous virtue," he replied solemnly. "He attended to that for you."
Dorothy looked out of the window. She looked out of the window most of the way to Boston, so that the interested youths opposite were able to enjoy only the averted line of her profile.
Julius, however, took delight in playing the lover for their benefit, and his attention to his sister would have deceived the elect. The result was a considerably heightened colour in Dot's face, which added the last touch of charm to the picture and completed her brother's satisfaction.
Arrived in the city, Broughton treated his sister to a delicious little dinner at a favourite hotel, which he himself relished to the full. He questioned whether she knew what she was eating or its quality, but she maintained an appearance of composure which only herself knew was attained at a cost.
He then escorted her to a florist's and himself insisted upon pinning upon the blue serge coat a gorgeous corsage knot of deep-hued red roses and mignonette, which added to her quiet costume the one brilliant note that was needed to bring out her beauty as his artistic young eye approved.
She protested in vain. "I don't want to wear flowers—to-night, my dear boy."
"Why not? There's nothing conspicuous about that, these days. More conspicuous not to, you might say. You often do it yourself."
"I know, but—to-night!"