"WHO IS SYLVIA?"
"Lemon, I think," said Miss Knowles, in defiance of the knowledge, born of many afternoons, that he preferred cream. She took a keen and mischievous pleasure in annoying this hot-tempered young man, and she generally succeeded. But to-day he was not to be diverted from the purpose which, at the very moment of his entrance, she had divined.
"Nothing, thank you," he answered. "I'll not have any tea. I came in only for a moment to tell you that I'm going to be married."
"Again?" she asked calmly, as though he had predicted a slight fall of snow. But her calm did not communicate itself to him.
"Again?" he repeated hotly. "What do you mean by 'again?'"
"Now, Jimmie," she remonstrated, as she settled herself more comfortably among her pillows and centered all her apparent attention upon a fragile cup and a small but troublesome sandwich, "don't be savage. I only mean that you always tell me so when you find an opportunity. That you even manufacture opportunities—some of them out of most unlikely material. A chance meeting in a cross-town car; an especially forte place in an opera; the moment when a bishop is saying grace or a host telling his favorite story. And yet you expect me to be surprised to hear it now! Here in my own deserted drawing-room with the fire lighted and the lamps turned low. You forget that one is allowed to remember."
"You allow yourself to forget when you choose and to remember when you wish: You are—"
"And to whom are you going to be married? To the same girl? Do you know, I think she is not worthy of you?"
"She is not," he acquiesced, and she, for a passing moment, seemed disconcerted. "Yet she is," he continued, cheered by this slight triumph, "the most persistent, industrious and deserving of all the young persons who, attracted by my great position and vast wealth, are pressing themselves or being pressed by designing relatives upon my notice."
His hostess laughed softly.