"And as for you, Uncle Archie, I thought you meant to sail a fortnight ago. If you've been staying on like this on my account——"
"Don't make a fool either of me or yourself, Roger!" said the General hastily, roused at last to speech by the annoyance of the situation. "Of course it was on your account that I have stayed on. But what on earth it all means, and where your affairs are—I'm hanged if I have the glimmer of an idea!"
Roger's smile was perfectly good-humoured.
"I haven't much myself," he said quietly.
"Do you—or do you not—mean to propose to Miss Floyd?" cried the General, pausing in the centre of Lafayette Square, now all but deserted, and apostrophizing with his umbrella—for the night was soft and rainy—the presidential statue above his head.
"Have I given you reason to suppose that I was going to do so?" said Roger slowly.
"Given me?—given everybody reason?—of course you have!—a dozen times over. I don't like interfering with your affairs, Roger—with any young man's affairs—but you must know that you have set Washington talking, and it's not fair to a girl—by George it isn't!—when she has given you encouragement and you have made her conspicuous, to begin the same story, in the same place, immediately, with someone else! As you say, I ought to have taken myself off long ago."
"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Roger hotly; "you shouldn't put words into my mouth, Uncle Archie. And I really don't see why you attack me like this. My tutor particularly asked me, if I came across them, to be civil to Mrs. Maddison and her daughter, and I have done nothing but pay them the most ordinary attentions."
"When a man is in love he pays no ordinary attentions. He has eyes for no one but the lady." The General's umbrella, as it descended from the face of Andrew Jackson and rattled on the flagged path, supplied each word with emphasis. "However, it is no good talking, and I don't exactly know why I should put my old oar in. But the fact is I feel a certain responsibility. People here have been uncommonly civil. Well, well!—I've wired to-day to ask if there is a berth left in the Venetia for Saturday. And you, I suppose"—the inquiry was somewhat peremptory—"will be going back to New York?"
"I have no intention of leaving Washington just yet," said Roger, with decision.