“I can’t agree with Mr. Romaine,” she said in her clear voice. “I think the Communists were the most frightful wretches that ever drew breath. To think of their murdering that brave old archbishop.”
“Political necessity, my dear young lady,” murmured Mr. Romaine. “M. Darboy brought his fate on himself.”
“However,” retorted Letty with a gay smile, “it is just possible that you may be guying us. The fact is, Mr. Romaine, your eyes are too expressive, and when you uttered those terrific sentiments, I saw that you were simply setting a trap for us, as deep as a well and as wide as a church door. But we won’t walk in it to please you.”
Miss Maywood colored quickly. It never had occurred to her literal mind before that Mr. Romaine did not mean every word he said, and if she had thought to the contrary, she would not have dared to say it. She fully expected an outbreak of the temper which Mr. Romaine was known to possess, but instead, as with Sir Archy, Letty’s daring onslaught produced only a smile. Mr. Romaine was well pleased at the notion that he was not too old to be chaffed.
“You are much too acute,” he said, with a sort of silent laughter.
“Just what I have always told Miss Corbin,” remarked Farebrother, energetically. “If you will join me, perhaps we can organize a society for the suppression of clever women, and then we sha’n’t be at their mercy as we now are.”
“And don’t forget a clause guaranteeing that they shall be deprived of all opportunities of a higher education,” suggested Sir Archy, who had learned by that time to forward any joke on hand.
“That would be unnecessary,” said Mr. Romaine. “The higher education does them no harm at all, and gives them much innocent pride and pleasure.”
As the luncheon progressed Miss Letty became more and more in doubt whether she liked Mr. Romaine or not. She regarded him as being somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-five, and wished to feel the respect for him she ought to feel for all decent graybeards. But Mr. Romaine was as fully determined not to be thought old as Letty was determined to think that he was old. He was certainly unlike any old man that she had ever met; not that there was anything in the least ridiculous about him,—he was much too astute to affect juvenility,—but there was an alertness in his wonderful black eyes and a keenness in his soft speech that was far removed from old age. And he was easily master of everybody at the table, excepting Farebrother and Letty. With feminine intuition Letty felt Mr. Romaine’s power, and knew that had Mr. Chessingham been the old man and Mr. Romaine the young doctor, Mr. Romaine would still have been in the ascendant. The Colonel, with well meant but cruel persistence, tried to get Mr. Romaine into a reminiscent mood, but in vain. Mr. Romaine utterly ignored the “forty years ago, my dear Romaine,” with which Colonel Corbin began many stories that never came to a climax, and he positively declined to discuss anything that had happened more than twenty years before. In fact this peculiarity was so marked that Letty strongly suspected that the old gentleman’s memory had been rigidly sawed off at a certain period, as a surgeon cuts off a leg at the knee-joint.
The Chessinghams evidently enjoyed themselves, and the utmost cordiality prevailed, except between the two girls, who eyed each other very much as the gladiators might have done when in the arena for the fray. Still they were perfectly polite, and showed a truly feminine capacity for pretty hypocrisy. Nevertheless, when the luncheon was over and the party separated, Miss Maywood and Miss Corbin parted with cordial sentiments of mutual disesteem. Scarcely were the two sisters alone at the hotel, before Miss Maywood burst forth with, “Well, Gladys, I suppose you see what the typical American girl is! Did you ever hear anything equal to Miss Corbin’s language to Mr. Romaine and Sir Archy? Actually rating them! And then the next moment plying them with the most outrageous flattery.”