“She has been walking fast,” he thought, and he was about to say so, when Lilian startled them with the exclamation:
“Why don’t you kiss her, Lawrence, just as you do me?”
Lawrence thought of the man, and rather coolly replied:
“I never kissed Miss Howell in my life,—neither would she care to have me.”
“Perhaps not,” returned Lilian, while Mildred’s cheeks flushed crimson,—“perhaps not, for she is a bit of a prude, I think; and then, too, I heard her say she didn’t like you as well as she did Clubs.”
“Oh, Lilian, when did I say so?” and Mildred’s eyes for an instant flashed with anger.
“You needn’t be so mad,” laughed Lilian. “You did say so, that first night I came here. Don’t you remember that I surprised you telling Oliver how Uncle Thornton kept you looking over those old stones for fear you’d talk with Lawrence, and how you hated them all?”
“Lilian,” said Lawrence, sternly, “no true woman would ever wantonly divulge the secrets of another, particularly if that other be her chosen friend.”
“S’pected they’d end in a row when I seen ’em so lovin’,” muttered Finn; and, hurrying up his horses, he drew up at the gate just as Lilian began to pout, Mildred to cry, and Lawrence to wish he had stayed at home.
“Tears, Gipsy? Yes, tears as true as I live,” said the Judge, who had come down to meet them, and with his broad hand he wiped away the drops resting on Mildred’s long eyelashes.