"My dear Dodie! You know you've always been the only one."
"Since the last!" she added. "But if it's not jealousy, what is it?—professional envy? You've been knocking him all the evening. You began it the day he came. What have you against him, anyway? He has never wronged you."
Ashton's eyes narrowed, and one corner of his mouth drew up.
"Hasn't he, though!" he retorted. "The big brute! I can't imagine how your mother can allow you and Genevieve to speak to him, when she knows what he is. And your uncle—the low fellow tried to blackmail him—accused him of stealing his bridge plans. First thing I know, he'll be saying I did it!"
"Did you?" teased the girl, as she seated herself on the heap of pillows at the head of the davenport.
Ashton's flushed face turned a sickly yellow. He fell, rather than seated himself, in the centre of the davenport.
"What—what—" he babbled; "you don't mean—No! I didn't!—I tell you,
I didn't! They're my plans; I drew them all myself!"
"Why, Laffie! what is the matter with you?" she demanded, half startled out of her mockery. "Can it be you've mixed them too freely? Or is it the lobster? You've a regular heavy-seas-the-first-day-out look."
He managed to pull himself together and mutter in assent: "Yes, it must be the lobster. But the sight of that brute is enough to—to—"
"Then perhaps you had better leave the room," sweetly advised Dolores.
"Mr. Blake happens to be one of my friends."