"I'm convinced it's a rendezvous...?"
Kirkwood smiled patiently at the landscape.
"Is Dorothy Calendar so very, very beautiful, Mr. Kirkwood?"—with a trace of malice.
Ostentatiously Kirkwood read the South Eastern and Chatham's framed card of warning, posted just above Mrs. Hallam's head, to all such incurable lunatics as are possessed of a desire to travel on the running-boards of railway carriages.
"You are going to meet her, aren't you?"
He gracefully concealed a yawn.
The woman's plan of attack took another form. "Last night, when you told me your story, I believed you."
He devoted himself to suppressing the temptingly obvious retort, and succeeded; but though he left it unspoken, the humor of it twitched the corners of his mouth; and Mrs. Hallam was observant. So that her next attempt to draw him out was edged with temper.
"I believed you an American but a gentleman; it appears that, if you ever were the latter, you've fallen so low that you willingly cast your lot with thieves."
Having exhausted his repertoire of rudenesses, Kirkwood took to twiddling his thumbs.