“His book!” cried Gilbert. “Did he talk to you about that, already?”
“Why, it seems that you don’t know your friend very well, after all!” mocked Mrs. Farrell with a laugh of triumph. “Why shouldn’t he talk to me about his book? He knew I would be interested in the subject; any woman would.”
“Upon my word, I don’t see what should particularly interest you in a history of heroism.”
Mrs. Farrell celebrated her fresh advantage with another laugh. “Why not?” she asked, taking some of the peas up in her hand and letting them drop through her fingers. “We’re all heroes till we’ve been tried, and I haven’t been tried. He’s going to put me into it. Do tell me his plan in writing it,” she entreated.
“Look here, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bending forward and looking keenly at her, “do you mean to tell me that Easton has actually been talking to you about his book, which I now perceive I mentioned first?”
“Look here, Mr. Gilbert,” said she, with an audaciously charming caricature of his attitude and manner, “do you mean to tell me that you doubt my word?”
“Well,” said Gilbert, with a laugh, “I own myself beaten. Did you ever hear of Miss Lillian— I forget her name—the St. Louis lawyeress? Why don’t you study our profession? At a cross-examination no witness could resist you, if I may judge from my own experience in helplessly blabbing what you never would have known otherwise. Come, Mrs. Farrell, you have triumphed so magnificently that you can afford to be frank; own, now, that all you know of Easton’s book is what I’ve told.”
He rose and stood looking down admiringly upon her uplifted face.
“No,” she answered, “I shall not do that, Colonel—I beg your pardon; I mean Major—Gilbert. Mr. Easton’s the colonel,” she added, parenthetically. “What was the reason,” she continued with well-studied innocence, “that he came out a colonel and you came out only a major, when you had so much the advantage of him at first?”
Gilbert’s face had hardened in the lines of a smile, and it kept the shape of a smile while all mirth died out of it, and he stared into the eyes of Mrs. Farrell, from which a sudden panic looked.