"He's a queer one,—but that reminds me: that Cosden man is in town."
"He is?" Edith exclaimed, arresting her coffee-cup on its way to her lips and poising it in mid-air. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I couldn't until now; it was only yesterday I saw him. He was much more civil than in Bermuda. Wanted to know about you and all that sort of thing. He's going to telephone you before he goes back."
"Very kind of him, I'm sure," Edith sniffed. "Perhaps I'll be in and perhaps I won't."
"Well that's your affair; you needn't see him on my account. But if you were to ask me, I'd say he's not such a bad sort."
"I didn't ask you, Ricky," Edith said significantly, and Stevens, with precedent to guide him, refrained from further discussion of the topic.
Yet in spite of the snap in her eyes when she commented on Cosden's inquiry it so happened that she was in when he telephoned, and she was also at home, arrayed in her most fetching afternoon gown, when he called an hour later. Not that he would notice whether she wore gingham or alpaca, she told herself, but she owed it to her self-respect to appear her best.
She had expected to see Cosden in his business suit with bulky contracts and other papers bulging from his pockets, rushing in and out again like a hurricane; but instead she beheld him entirely at his ease in cutaway and silk hat, with immaculate grey spats over his patent-leather boots. He carried himself with an air quite different from that she had become familiar with in Bermuda, and the reception she had planned for him—brief, matter-of-fact and bristling with satire—required a certain modification.
"I wasn't looking for a social call," Edith said guardedly after a non-committal greeting. "I thought perhaps you had some business matter to discuss."
"Still unforgiving!" Cosden smiled. "What can I do to make you forgetful?"