“Just as you please,” he said, with stolid good-humor. “Don’t be offended. I came here with ladies—and they wouldn’t let me smoke. I miss my smoke. I thought I’d slip away a bit and have it. All right! I’ll play.”
“Oh! smoke by all means!” retorted Blanche. “I shall choose somebody else. I won’t have you!”
The honorable young gentleman looked unaffectedly relieved. The petulant young lady turned her back on him, and surveyed the guests at the other extremity of the summer-house.
“Who shall I choose?” she said to herself.
A dark young man—with a face burned gipsy-brown by the sun; with something in his look and manner suggestive of a roving life, and perhaps of a familiar acquaintance with the sea—advanced shyly, and said, in a whisper:
“Choose me!”
Blanche’s face broke prettily into a charming smile. Judging from appearances, the dark young man had a place in her estimation peculiarly his own.
“You!” she said, coquettishly. “You are going to leave us in an hour’s time!”
He ventured a step nearer. “I am coming back,” he pleaded, “the day after to-morrow.”
“You play very badly!”