She smiled mysteriously.
“I admit nothing,” she said. “I’m complimented enough to know that you thought me game enough to do it.”
“Never thought of you at all,” he remarked frankly. “Should have, of course. I was thinking of myself solely. Dreadfully selfish, eh? I am an egoist, not an altruist at all.... But it would have been jolly.”
“Thank you.”
He laughed intimately. “We have a lot of personal vocabulary between us, haven’t we? ‘Thank you,’ ‘much,’ and——”
“And ‘my dear.’”
“Oh, yes! Yes; yes. That little family luncheon-party with our own butler was charming, now, wasn’t it?”
“Your ear-tips are reddening, Richard, my dear.”
“Stuff,” he returned. “You can’t see them in this darkness.... Now, why did you suggest the plagued thing! They are beginning to burn like fury. Odd about those ears; they give me credit for modesty and honesty and a lot of virtues. Blushing is just a disease of the circulation, like pallor. Criminals blush as often, I suppose, as——”
“Richard!”