"No, I don't."
"Isn't that odd?" he said. "You don't know Jack Austin and I don't know Mrs. Austin. It was nice of her to ask me. They say she is one of the best ever."
"It was certainly nice of her to ask you," said the girl, eyes brightening over her muff.
"I was in Europe when they were married," he said. "I suppose you were there."
"No, I wasn't. That sounds rather strange, doesn't it?"
"Why, yes, rather!" he replied, looking up at her in his boyish, perplexed way. And for a moment her heart failed her; he was nice, but also he was a living temptation. Never before in all her brief life had she been tempted to do to anybody what she was doing to him. She had often been imprudent in a circumspect way—conventionally unconventional at times—even a little daring. At sheer audacity she had drawn the line, and now the impulse to cross that line had been too much for her. But even she did not know exactly why temptation had overcome her.
There was something that she ought to tell him—and tell him at once. Yet, after all, it was really already too late to tell him—had been too late from the first. Fate, Chance and Destiny, the Mystic Three, disguised, as usual, one as a German conductor; one as a large mottled man; the other as a furry footman had been bumped by Seabury and jeered at by a girl wearing dark blue eyes and chinchillas. And now the affronted Three were taking exclusive charge of John Seabury and Cecil Gay. She was partly aware of this; she did not feel inclined to interfere where interference could do no good. And that being the case, why not extract amusement from matters as they stood? Alas, it is not well to laugh at the Mystic Three! But Cecil Gay didn't know that. You see, even she didn't know everything.
"You will like Jack Austin," he asserted.