“No, she did not. It was the same meddlesome friend who first told her of your family’s objections. Oh, if I were Everard I would tell his family to—
“To go to the devil,” suggested Dick helpfully.
“Please not to put words into my mouth! Yes, I should!” she returned hotly. Then, illogically and severely added, “particularly such words. And after what I told you about Harris Haynes I should have thought that an ordinary sense of justice—Oh, it was unmanly of you!”
Dolly’s imp now had spurred her into a respectable state of rage, and Dick’s wrath rose to meet hers.
“Just a moment,” he said. “What was that about Haynes?” Two wrinkled lines appeared between his eyes. His mouth altered in its set, giving to his naturally pleasant face an aspect of almost savage determination.
“Why,” thought Dolly, “he’s looking at me as if I wasn’t a girl at all, but just something in his path to beat down.” And her quick pang of alarm had something pleasurable in it.
“I want that again about Haynes.”
“I say you were not fair to him. You know perfectly well that whatever chance Mr. Haynes may have with Helga——”
“Chance of what? Of marrying her?”
“Certainly,” said Dolly boldly.