As we left the dining-room one of the servants told Richard that there was a long-distance call for him, a bit of news which brought a frown to my lord's handsome face.
"Well, tell 'em I can't be found," he commanded briefly, as he caught the extreme tip of my elbow and began steering our course toward the library. We usually had a few short minutes alone there after dinner.
"The operator has already told the party that you are here, Mr. Chalmers," the colored boy answered, looking embarrassed and trying to slink away into the back hall as soon as he could.
"The devil!" Richard exclaimed, under his breath, but he loosed his hold upon my arm as we reached the foot of the steps, and he suggested that I run on up-stairs and wait until I thought he had had time to finish his conversation, then come back and join him in the library.
"If you mix up with them in the drawing-room now you can't find an excuse to get up and leave when I have finished," he explained, and I smiled a happy assent.
Sophie, too, had gone to her room for a few minutes after dinner, and, as she heard me stirring around in mine, she called at my open door to say that she wanted my advice about something.
"Come in, by all means," I bade her. "I have lots of advice."
"It's about a dress for the ball to-morrow night," she said, holding over her arm a dainty gown of soft white silk. She spread the garment out upon my bed, then stood off a few steps and looked at it. "Do you think it will do?" she finally asked.
"Do? Why, I think it's lovely!" I declared truthfully.
"Well, I want to look lovely," she answered, with a queer little smile, but as she sat down on the bed and picked up a bit of chiffon flounce in the neck of the gown, she looked up at me again, with an expression of almost tragedy in her eyes. "But I have no gloves that are long enough and clean enough to wear with this!"