"If Prince Haganè is in it, it will be worse than a turn-up; it will be a heave," said Dodge, shaking his head also.
"But, dad, I have been patient. You know how I hate being patient. I'm perfectly on edge when I have to wait. Every little bit of me begs to be cut off, and allowed to run in scraps. Oh, don't look so solemn! I'm only a girl. I can't upset the earth. Everything has gone wrong this morning from the minute I stepped out of bed on a tailless cat. You can make it well, daddy. My heart simply tugs in me toward Yuki."
At mention of her heart Dodge gave a prolonged and envious sigh. Todd smiled, but Gwendolen only looked indignant. Tears stood in her pretty eyes, and Dodge felt himself to be a brute.
"Your Excellency," he said, "if I might be allowed to suggest, why not let me be Miss Todd's escort? If I am along, I think, perhaps—" He broke off with a significant intonation. The two men exchanged glances, and the elder, catching his chin with a characteristic gesture, walked away thoughtfully.
"Oh, when dad looks like that, he is going over the entire American Constitution before he answers," cried Gwendolen, in despair. "May I not sit somewhere, Mr. Dodge?"
There were but three chairs in the room, the two revolving desk-chairs, and one suggestively rigid and slippery, meant for visitors. Generally, as now, it was heaped with a tottering mass of papers. Dodge, with suspicious alacrity, leaned forward to wheel the minister's chair. Before he could reach it, Gwendolen had thrown herself into the other, and faced the open vitals of his private desk.
In the very centre, just out of range of the minister's eye, stood an unframed photograph of Carmen Gil y Niestra, a languorous Spanish beauty lately arrived in Tokio. The picture had come that morning by mail, and was only waiting to be carried to Dodge's rooms; but Gwendolen could not know that. She was humiliated and annoyed to feel a deep, dry sob rise to her throat. At another time, when her best friend was not in trouble, and she hadn't stepped on the cat, she would have made some bright remark about it; but now she dared not trust her voice.
Dodge, carefully removing the papers to the floor, seated himself on the visitor's chair, and let his eyes rest with a curious, half-triumphant look upon Gwendolen's downcast face. This young man, unlike others to whom she had chosen to show favor, had not hastened to throw himself at her feet, pleading to be sat upon, trod upon, built upon, anything but the one obvious suggestion that he rise and walk away. He had never tried to take her hand; never once said that he loved her, though the girl until this moment had felt certain of it. Sometimes she had tried to flatter him into the declaration; again she would pique and goad him. The result had been the same. Dodge followed her everywhere, paid her all possible attentions, and said everything but the one thing she had determined to hear. With an instinctive coquette, the desire is not so much to overcome her quarry, as to feel that there is no quarry she cannot overcome. But even from the seductive moonlit decks of the steamship Dodge had escaped, uncommitted. The situation was both piquant and exciting.
"Well, Dodge," said the ambassador, at length. "I am willing to take your suggestion. Is the carriage ready, Gwen?"
"It's been at your door for hours."