“Will you tell me that story?” said Marion, whose curiosity he had raised and allowed to drop a dozen times.
“Some time or other,” said Eddy. “I like to keep you on the tenter hooks. You look prettier than ever when you have a fit of curiosity which makes your eyes shine. Do you know your eyes give out sparks when you look at me like that?”
“Like a cat?” said Marion, “that is no compliment.”
“Yes, just like a cat, torturing the poor little mouse that she has fascinated with her big shining eyes.” He opened his own eyes wide with a threatening movement of his hand, at which they both laughed. “Before she devours him, she tortures him,” he said. Which was it? he or she? But poor little Marion had not the faintest idea that she was in the way of being devoured. She did not require very fine methods; but accepted the compliments and the badinage in her simplicity. It amused her extremely to “tease” him, as she thought, to make little rude speeches and show her innocent power. After all it was innocent enough, and artless, if without much delicacy or dignity. So much meaning as was in it was all on Eddy’s side.
There was no question of cat or mouse between the other two, who stood by each other’s side without movement, without looking at each other, while the question of the ball was discussed. Rosamond at last said to her partner, speaking as usual from her full height, and without even turning her head his way: “You do not dance so very badly, if you would take time and not be flurried.” It was the same advice which Evelyn had given him about his shooting, and which he had resented then, as he resented this counsel now.
“You are very kind to encourage me. I have no desire to learn,” he said.
“Oh, that’s silly,” said Rosamond “Why shouldn’t you learn? Why shouldn’t you make yourself a little agreeable, Mr. Rowland? No, of course it is nothing to me. I see you for a few weeks, a great deal of you, and then perhaps I never see you again. It does not matter to me in the very least. Still it is a pity to see a man sitting as you do—not speaking, not taking an interest in anything. What is the good of being a man at all?”
Archie was very much taken aback by this onslaught. He stared at her for a moment helplessly. His wit was not quick enough to make any lively rejoinder as he might have done. All he could say was rather vulgar, and said with an injured, offended air—“I did not make myself.”
“You ought to make yourself,” said the severe young judge, “if you are not made properly to begin with; but that is not the question. Don’t you know it makes everybody uncomfortable to see the son of the house sitting behind never saying anything. I hate to be made uncomfortable,” said Rosamond, “it makes me think all sorts of horrid things. But there is nothing the matter with you. You are not deformed or bad in your head, or out of health, or badly snubbed. Mrs. Rowland keeps looking at you: she does not know what to do; and you make me horribly uncomfortable,” said Rosamond with energy; “that was why I made you get up and dance.”
“It wasn’t very successful,” said Archie, with a grim smile; “don’t you wish you had let it alone?”