“You are looking rather bored, do you know, Miss Pomeroy? Suppose we go and look at the flowers until we’re wanted?”
She hesitated a moment, and then moved idly into the conservatory, looking back at Loring with a smile as he followed her.
“I was a little bored,” she confessed. “It is very kind of you to come and amuse me.”
For the next moment or two Loring could hardly be said to prove himself very amusing. He sauntered round the little conservatory at his companion’s side, his eyes fixed keenly upon her impassive profile with something very calculating in their depths. Miss Pomeroy also was apparently absorbed in thought, and did not notice his silence.
“You are a great friend of the Romaynes, are you not?” she said at last, in her thin, even, very “proper” tones.
Loring glanced at her again.
“Well,” he said, “that’s not a question that it’s particularly easy for me to answer, to-day. I have been on fairly intimate terms with them, as you know. But do you know what that kind of thing sometimes leads to?”
Miss Pomeroy shook her head.
“Well, there is such a thing as knowing people too well,” said Loring deliberately. “And then you find out little traits that don’t do. To tell you the truth, Romayne and I have quarrelled.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Miss Pomeroy softly.