“Answer me, Sadie, answer me,” he cried.
“Hush, hush,” she whispered, “I hear my uncle coming,” and now she struggled in earnest to release herself, but strenuously he held her firm.
“Answer yes or no.”
“Which word will release me most speedily?” she demanded.
“The first.”
“Then it must be yes. A fine masterful lover you are!” she cried with pretended indignation, as she whisked herself free from him.
It was a maid who came in, and taking up the white cloak, she adjusted it over the fair shoulders of her young mistress. A moment later the Colonel, rubicund and beaming, entered the drawing-room.
“Ah, Steele, is that you?” he saluted his visitor, shaking hands in the most friendly manner; “has my niece told you that we must enact the inhospitable savage tonight, and turn you forth in a cold and pitiless world?”
“Yes, Colonel,” laughed John, who was in such a state of joyous exaltation that he would have laughed, no matter what his host had said, “yes, and I must confess that it is like being turned from Paradise.”
The Colonel, smiling, allowed his eyes to pass from the exuberant young man to the downcast face of his niece, who seemed absorbed in the rearrangement of her white cloak. If the Colonel suspected anything, he said nothing that might give a hint of his surmise.