"Do, please, for this afternoon I shall want you to go on an errand for me which may keep you until late. Don't tire yourself, though, my dear."
She nodded a careless farewell, and a few moments later her car whirled off down the drive.
Betty waited until its rather bizarre stripes had disappeared and then resolutely applied herself to her task. Seated there at the desk in her severely simple morning frock, with every hair in place and a serene, intent expression masking all emotion, she made a vastly different picture from that of a few hours earlier when she had crept into that very room in the darkness just before the dawn, trembling with fear of discovery yet urged on as if hypnotized by a stronger will than her own.
If her thoughts reverted to that hour and what she had accomplished therein, she gave no outward sign, but worked systematically until order resolved itself from the chaos before her, and two neatly arranged piles of envelopes marked the result of her labors.
A light knock interrupted her and before she could speak the door opened and Jack Wolvert entered, smiling in bland assumption of his welcome.
"I felt sure I should find somebody about!" he remarked. "Welch left me to cool my heels in the drawing-room, but I am not over fond of my own society. Do be charitable and give me permission to bore you a little, Miss Shaw!"
He lounged with easy grace over to her desk and rested his elbows upon its top staring boldly down into her eyes. She averted them and leaned back in her chair, an unpleasant sensation, almost of repulsion, tingling to her fingertips.
"Mrs. Atterbury will not be back until lunch time, Mr. Wolvert." Her voice was coolly impersonal. "If you care to wait until then, however, there are books here and Welch will bring you the morning papers or anything else you may require."
"But I much prefer to talk to you." The smile deepened and an impish, mocking light danced in his pale eyes. "It really is time that we became better acquainted, now that we are to see so much more of each other."
Betty gasped. She did not understand the final observation but the man's audacity disconcerted her. Instinctively disliking him from the moment of their first meeting, his appearance on the occasion of Mrs. Atterbury's dinner party had not tended to raise him in the girl's estimation. His immoderate drinking, the strange toast he had proposed like a challenge flung into the spirit world, and his reckless abandonment to whatever mood swayed him lingered disquietingly in Betty's mind, and she longed to be rid of his presence.