[Illustration: "'Don't do it, Valerie!'">[
"Perhaps. You will desire to be, too, some day. A good school, an accomplished scholar."
"And the schoolmaster? Oh! José!"
They both were laughing now—he with apparent pleasure in her coquetry and animation, she still a little confused and instinctively on her guard.
Rita came strolling over, a tiny cigarette balanced between her slender fingers:
"Stop flirting, José," she said; "it's too near dinner time. Valerie, child, I'm dining with the unspeakable John again. It's a horrid habit. Can't you prescribe for me? José, what are you doing this evening?"
"Penance," he said; "I'm dining with my family."
"Penance," she repeated with a singular look—"well—that's one way of regarding the pleasure of having any family to dine with—isn't it, Valerie?"
"José didn't mean it that way."
Rita blew a ring from her cigarette's glimmering end.