“I do not want you to tell me! I do not care a button what has happened to them!” cries he, rudely, but half laughing.
Bested in the attempt to outstrip her companion, Miss Carew stops short.
“You would be sorry if you knew,” she throws out tantalizingly, unable to resist the temptation to go as near as possible to the line which she is resolved not to cross, and unworthily annoyed at the absence of pressure put upon her.
“I should not,” replies her lover, with quiet conviction. “If it were anything that would make them less beastly prosperous, I should be glad.”
“There was nothing ‘beastly prosperous’ about them to-day,” says she indignantly, as memory reconstructs the bitterly dripping tears of the one millionaire, and the stubby head clutched in short coarse hands of the other.
He receives the information in silence, not wishing to make her more angry than she already is, and being really quite without interest as to the topic which engages her.
Lavinia is obliged to give up the attempt to stimulate a curiosity which, after all, she has no right to gratify, and, thrusting her partisanship into her pocket, reluctantly changes the topic.
“Have you found out why your father was so much put out at luncheon?”
It is growing too dark to see his face, but she catches the instant change in his tone.
“Yes.”