“Yes. I may come to see you to-morrow?”
“Come as early as you like—in reason.”
That was all, for Cassavetti rejoined us, dragging up a chair in place of the one I had appropriated.
“So you and Mr. Wynn are neighbors,” she said gaily. “Though he never told me so.”
“Doubtless he considered me too insignificant,” replied Cassavetti, suavely enough, though I felt, rather than saw, that he eyed me malignantly.
“Oh, you are not in the least insignificant, though you are exasperatingly—how shall I put it?—opinionated,” she retorted, and turned to me. “Mr. Cassavetti has accused me of being a Russian.”
“Not accused—complimented,” he interpolated, with a deprecatory bow.
“You see?” Anne appealed to me in the same light tone, but our eyes met in a significant glance, and I knew that she had understood my warning, perhaps far better than I did myself; for after all I had been guided by instinct rather than knowledge when I uttered it.
“I have told him that I have never been in Russia,” she continued, “and he is rude enough to disbelieve a lady!”
“I protest—and apologize also,” asserted Cassavetti, “though you are smoking a Russian cigarette.”