“So it was only on Mr. Duncan's account that you didn't ask me to come down to the parlor?” she said.
Bob was in a quandary. He was a truthful person, and he had learned something of the world through his three years at Cambridge. He had seen many young women, and many kinds of them. But the girl beside him was such a mixture of innocence and astuteness that he was wholly at a loss how to deal with her—how to parry her searching questions.
“Naturally—I wanted to have you all to myself,” he said; “you ought to know that.”
Cynthia did not commit herself on this point. She wished to go mercilessly to the root of the matter, but the notion of what this would imply prevented her. Bob took advantage of her silence.
“Everybody who sees you falls a victim, Cynthia,” he went on; “Mrs. Duncan and Janet lost their hearts. You ought to have heard them praising you at breakfast.” He paused abruptly, thinking of the rest of that conversation, and laughed. Bob seemed fated to commit himself that day. “I heard the way you handled Heth Sutton,” he said, plunging in. “I'll bet he felt as if he'd been dropped out of the third-story window,” and Bob laughed again. “I'd have given a thousand dollars to have been there. Somers and I went out to supper with a classmate who lives in Washington, in that house over there,” and he pointed casually to one of the imposing mansions fronting on the park. “Mrs. Duncan said she'd never heard anybody lay it on the way you did. I don't believe you half know what happened, Cynthia. You made a ten-strike.”
“A ten-strike?” she repeated.
“Well,” he said, “you not only laid out Heth, but my father and Mr. Duncan, too. Mrs. Duncan laughed at 'em—she isn't afraid of anything. But they didn't say a word all through breakfast. I've never seen my father so mad. He ought to have known better than to run up against Uncle Jethro.”
“How did they run up against Uncle Jethro?” asked Cynthia, now keenly interested.
“Don't you know?” exclaimed Bob, in astonishment.
“No,” said Cynthia, “or I shouldn't have asked.”