"Harriet, do you know you are extraordinarily easy to look upon? What gets you up so early?"
"I've been walking," she said, briefly and unresponsively. His social pleasantries instantly antagonized her, and he saw it.
"Well, I thought perhaps I had better get out. I'm at the club for a day or two. I believe Miss Hawkes, Rosa, the eldest sister, wants me to get up a reading, the great Indian Epic Poems, something along that line. It's for the Red Cross, of course." He yawned, and smiled at the early summer sky. "Ward tells me," he added, giving the girl a sharp glance, "that you and he--eh?"
Harriet flushed.
"I'm sorry he told you!"
"Oh, my dear child!" Blondin made a deprecatory motion of his hands. "Of course, I think you're very wise," he added.
This smote upon her new-born self-respect, and all the glory departed from the day. She had taken off her loose white coat, and pushed back the hat that pressed upon her thick, shining hair. It clung in damp ringlets to the soft duskiness of forehead and temples, her cheeks glowed rosily under their warm olive, and her clouded smoke-blue eyes were averted; he could see only the thick, upcurling black lashes that fringed them so darkly. The man saw her breast rise and fall with some quick emotion as he half-smilingly watched her.
"The lad gets a beautiful and wise and very discreet wife," he was beginning, but Harriet silenced him angrily.
"We need not indulge in compliments, Roy! If I marry Ward--"
"If--? I supposed it definite!"