“I never had a pleasanter day,” Mrs. Massingbyrd assured him. “It’s not often I get a chance to display my only beauty free and unrebuked.”
“Your pictures came out well,” said Almington. “I couldn’t wait for the film to be through. I had it developed at once;” and he felt in his pocket.
Mrs. Massingbyrd held out her rosy palm, then drew it back.
“No, not here,” she decided. “Come down to the rose garden and show them to me there. After all, they’re just for you and me.” And it was with a self-satisfied air, the air of a conqueror, that Almington unfolded his long legs and followed Mrs. Massingbyrd.
I looked at my companions. Cecilia’s cheeks were still hot. I saw she was a little bewildered, but she acted like a little thoroughbred, and made pretty, perfunctory, young-girl talk with Felicia, whose face told me nothing; and with Drake, who looked profoundly pleased.
Mrs. Massingbyrd and her cavalier were strolling up and down in the rose garden at the foot of the terrace. Coquetry was in every movement of her little blond head. Conquest was written large on Almington.
In pursuance of my own little policy, “There goes a lost man,” I remarked.
“He’s been lost so often and won so often that it doesn’t matter much, does it?” said Felicia, lightly. “So if it’s only he that’s lost, we won’t have far to look for him.”
“I thought Mrs. Mass. had turned him down,” remarked Ellery Drake.
“It hasn’t apparently prevented his turning up again,” Felicia replied, pertly.