"I heard your father talking to you," she whispered. "You—you know what he dislikes so. Why can you not be—discreet?"
Chilly moved uneasily: "Oh, I know," he said. "But I can't always be giving an imitation of a quaker meeting! I'm not a child."
"You must not anger him," she said. "I—for my sake, I wish you would be more careful."
He patted her hand. "All right, Duchess! I'll mind my p's and q's. But you must go back to bed now. Don't you worry about me."
She bent down and kissed him on the forehead before she glided from the room.
CHAPTER VII
ARROWS OF DESIRE
"Here is the new rose," said Echo. "Its name is the Laurant Carle."
Cameron Craig looked—at her, not at the blossom. She was in simple white and as she stood there in the perfumed garden, vivid, elemental, tuned to the wonder and passion of living, her slim figure outlined against the dark green shrubbery and her face and gold-bronze hair touched with the slanting sunlight, she seemed herself some great, rare, golden flower in a silver sheath. Lines he had somewhere read sprang into his mind: