“I am sure I hope you will be very successful.”
“Do you mean that?”
Miss Sommerton looked at him quietly for a moment.
“Do you think,” she said, “I am in the habit of saying things I do not mean?”
“I think you are.”
“Well, you are not a bit more complimentary than—than—you used to be.”
“You were going to say than I was on the banks of the St. Maurice?”
“Oh, you visited the St. Maurice, did you? How far away from Boston that seems, doesn’t it?”
“It is indeed a great distance, Miss Sommerton. But apparently not half as long as the round-about way we are traveling just now. Miss Sommerton, I waited and waited in Boston for you to return. I want to be a dependence. I admit the conquest. I wish to swear fealty to Miss Eva Sommerton of Boston, and now I ask my third question, will you accept the allegiance?”
Miss Sommerton was a little slow in replying, and before she had spoken Mrs. Lennox bustled in, and said—