Lucian smiled maliciously, removed his cigar from between his lips, described a smoke wreath in mid-air, replaced his weed, and said: "Do I? then mum's the word;" and he relapsed into silence.
He seemed bent on annoying her, for there was a laughing glimmer in his eye, and he obstinately refused to attempt to draw her out, and so make easier whatever she might have to say, for he knew that she had signaled him out to-day for a purpose.
Mutely he walked by her side, and contentedly puffed at his cigar until, at length, she turned upon him, and struck petulantly at the hand that had just removed it from his lips. The weed fell from his fingers to the ground, and Cora set her slippered heel upon it, as if it were an enemy, and laughed triumphantly.
"Now we are on a level," she cried. "Do you suppose I intend to give you that advantage over me?"
"It seems not," with a shrug expressive of resignation and a smile hidden by his mustache.
He was not the man to be angered, or even ruffled, by these little feminine onslaughts. In fact, they rather pleased and amused him, and he had become well accustomed to Cora's "little ways," as he called them. Deprived of his cigar, he thrust his hands into his pockets and whistled softly.
"Lucian, if you don't stop looking so comfortable, and content, and altogether don't-care-ish, I shall do something very desperate," she exclaimed, pettishly.
"No?" raising his eyebrows in mock incredulity; "you don't tell me. I thought you were in a little heaven of your own, Mrs. Arthur."
"Oh! you did? Very clever of you. Well, Mr. Davlin, has it occurred to you that heaven might not be a congenial climate for me?"
"Not while your wings are so fresh, surely? You have scarcely entered your paradise, fair peri."