And Alice looked into the fire, apparently as sweetly unconscious of anything particular on Jim's part as if she had not read aright the flash of his eye and the pressure of his hand.
Jim seemed vexed and nervous, and talked extravaganzas all the evening, with more than even his usual fluency, and towards ten o'clock said to Alice:
"I am at your command at any time, when you are ready to return home."
"Thank you, Jim," said Alice, with that demure and easy composure with which young ladies avoid a crisis without seeming to see it. "I am going to stay here to-night, to discuss some important points of party costume with Eva; so mind you don't fail us to-morrow night. Au revoir!"
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
A MIDNIGHT CAUCUS OVER THE COALS.
"Now, don't you girls sit up and talk all night," said Harry from the staircase, as he started bedward, after Jim Fellows had departed, and the house-door was locked for the night.
Now, Eva was one of that class of household birds whose eyes grow wider awake and brighter as the small hours of the night approach; and, just this night, she felt herself swelling with a world of that distinctively feminine talk which women keep for each other, when the lordly part of creation are out of sight and hearing. Harry, who worked hard in his office all day and came home tired at night, and who had the inevitable next day's work ever before him, was always an advocate for early and regular hours, and regarded these sisterly night-watches with suspicion.
"You know, now, Eva, that you oughtn't to sit up late. You're not strong," he preached from the staircase in warning tones, as he slowly ascended.