"Your delicacy in letting me know you understood—"
Disengaging her hand, she broke off with a startled movement, and a low cry of surprise.
A taxicab, swinging into the street from Eighth Avenue, had boiled up to the curb before the gate, and pausing, discharged a young man in a hurry; witness the facts that he had the door open when halfway between the corner and the house, and was on the running-board before the vehicle was fairly at a halt.
In a stride this one crossed the sidewalk and pulled up, silently, trying to master the temper which was visibly shaking him. Tall, well-proportioned, impressively turned out in evening clothes, he thrust forward a handsome face marred by an evil, twisted mouth, and peered searchingly at the girl.
Instinctively she shrank back inside the fence, eyeing him with a look of fascinated dismay.
As instinctively P. Sybarite bristled between the two.
"Well?" he snapped at the intruder.
An impatient gesture of a hand immaculately gloved in white abolished him completely—as far, at least, as the other was concerned.
"Ah—Miss Lessing, I believe?"
The voice was strong and musical but poisoned with a malicious triumph that grated upon the nerves of P. Sybarite; he declined to be abolished.