``I haven't been with you for two months. Be a good girl, and do some missionary work. Slumming is the fashion, you know. Come and cheer me up. It's been fiendishly stupid without you.''
She laughed at his sincerely gloomy voice.
``Come,'' he urged; ``we'll have dinner in the back parlor. Do you remember that awful dinner-party?'' He laughed as he spoke, but—being 'sure';—in the darkness of the shabby hack he looked at her intently. . . . Oh, if David were only out of the way!
``Remember it? I should think I did!'' There was no telltale flicker on her smooth cheek; even in the gloom of the carriage he could see that the dark amber of her eyes brimmed over with amusement, and the dimple deepened entrancingly. ``How could I forget it? Didn't I wear my first long dress to that dinner-party—oh, and my six-button gloves?''
``I—'' said Blair, and paused. ``I remember other things than the gloves and long dress, Elizabeth.'' (Why shouldn't he say as much as that? He was certain of himself, and David was certain of her, so why not speak of what it gave him a rapturous pang to remember?)
But at his words the color whipped into her cheek; her clear brows drew together into a slight frown. ``How is your mother, Blair?'' she said coldly. "Oh, very well. Can you imagine Mother anything but well? The heat has nearly killed me, but Mother is iron."
"She's perfectly wonderful!"
"Yes; wonderful woman," he agreed carelessly. "Elizabeth, promise you'll come to-morrow evening?"
"Cherry-pie would think it was horrid in me not to stay with her, when
I've been away so long."
"I think it's horrid in you not to stay with me."