“Of course, if you would rather,” he answered, a little stiffly. “What has happened?” he asked himself. He knew he had done nothing. Was Blanche changing? Had he only imagined her attitude toward him differed from her attitude toward half a dozen others? It had seemed different—but how could a man be sure?
Harassed, suspicious, he hesitated over making the proposal to Lillian until the next afternoon at the last moment. He rode over to the Crosbys’ and found his sister, fair and diaphanous in her mousseline gown, crumbling bread to the gold fish in the fountain. The look she gave his proposition, sweet as it was, made him uncomfortable. Any man would do to fill in the fourth place, he had stupidly said.
“Any man for Miss Remi?” she had asked him. And he had fired.
She heard him with a half smile, softly beating the ground with the dried palm leaf she prettily carried as a parasol.
Well, she told him, she did not care particularly for such an expedition. It was such a time since she had seen him alone! Wouldn’t it be much nicer to make it just a tête-à-tête dinner at Estrelda’s?
He replied, with irritation, that if she did not care to make one of the party, it would not prevent him from taking Miss Remi.
“Ah, a previous arrangement,” Lillian said, taking in his whip and his riding boots as if she had just noticed them. “Well, you must realize by this time just what sort of a person she is.”
“I am far from being sure, but I intend to find out this afternoon.”
She turned sharply. “You mean you are going to ask her to marry you?”
“Well, if I am?”