“I hope I shall see you to-morrow.”
“Possibly, though I shall be very busy,” was his reply; and just then one of the juniors said to him:
“By the way, Forrest, who is that fine-looking, elderly gentleman I saw with you this evening? Your father?”
“Yes, my father,” Everard replied, feeling a desire to throttle the young man, and glancing involuntarily at Josephine, over whom a curious change had come.
The was a blood-red spot on her cheeks, and an unnatural glitter in her eyes, as she said to the quartette around her:
“Excuse me a moment. I have just thought of something which I particularly wish to say to Mr. Forrest.”
The next moment she stood in the hall with him, and was saying to him rapidly and excitedly: “Your father is here, and you did not tell me. I don’t like it. I wish to see him,—wish him to see me, and you must introduce me at the reception. I intend to be there.”
“Very well,” was all Everard said, but he felt as if a band of iron was drawn around his heart as he went back to Beatrice and Rossie, who were waiting for him, and who noticed at once the worried look upon his face, and wondered a little at it.
Had anything happened to disquiet him, that he should seem so absent-minded and disturbed? Rossie was the first to reach a solution of the mystery, and when at his request Beatrice seated herself at the piano and began to play, she stole up to him, and whispered very low, “Have you seen Joe Fleming to-night?”
“Yes,” was his reply, and Rossie’s wise little nod said plainly, “I guessed as much.”