"The dampness of the day has nothing at all to do with it," she kept on with frozen evenness. "I suggested it because a fire is a safe place for a girl to look into while her profile is being studied."
"Mother!"
Her sense of outraged propriety suddenly slipped its leash.
"It keeps her eyes looking earnest, instead of eager," she burst out. "And any girl who'd let a man—allow a man—to run away from a party whose very magnificence was induced on his account, and take her off to tea in a public place, and come to see her the very next afternoon—a stranger, and a foreigner at that—is—is playing with fire!"
"You mean she'd better be playing with fire while he's calling?" I asked quietly. "We must remember to have the old andirons polished, then."
She stopped in her task of dusting the parlor—whose recesses without the shining new player-piano suddenly looked as bare and empty as a shop-window just after the holidays.
"You wilfully ignore my warning," she declared. "If this man left that party yesterday and comes calling to-day, of course he's impressed! And if you let him, of course you're impressed. This much goes without saying; but I beg you to be careful, Grace! You happen to have those very serious, betraying eyes, and I want you to guard them while he's here!"
"By keeping my hands busy, eh?" I laughed. "Well, I'll promise, mother, if that'll be any relief to you."
So the fire was kindled, as a preventative measure; and at four o'clock he came—not on the stroke, but ten minutes after. I was glad that he had patronized the street railway service for this call, and left the limousine in its own boudoir—you couldn't imagine anything so exquisite being kept in a lesser place—or I'm afraid that our little white-capped maid would have mistaken it for an ambulance and assured him that nobody was sick. Gleaming blue limousines were scarce in that section.
"Am I early?" he asked, after we had shaken hands and he had glanced toward the fire with a little surprised, gratified expression. "I wasted a quarter of an hour waiting for this car."