"Please don't leave me alone, Mrs. Lee," pleaded Alden, rather wickedly.
"All right," Edith answered, accepting the inevitable as gracefully as she might. "Shall I play solitaire while you read the paper?"
"If you like," he replied.
Madame took her candle and bade them good-night. As she went up-stairs, Edith said, with a pout: "I wish I were going to bed too."
"You can't sleep all the time," he reminded her. The paper had slipped to the floor. "Mother tells me that you slept this morning until half-past nine."
The Souvenir of Rural Lovers
"Yes—but—." She bit her lips and the colour rose to her temples. She hastily shuffled the cards and began to play solitaire so rapidly that he wondered whether she knew what cards she was playing.
"But," he said, "you didn't sleep well last night. Was that what you were going to say?"
Edith dropped her cards, and looked him straight in the face. "I slept perfectly," she lied. "Didn't you?"
"I slept just as well as you did," he answered. She thought she detected a shade of double meaning in his tone.