“Nora,” he said nervously, “for the last year there’s been something trembling on my lips—”
“Oh, Monty,” she cried ecstatically, “don’t shave it off, I love it!”
He rose, discomfited, to meet his hostess coming toward him with Miss Ethel Cartwright, a close friend of hers whom he had never before met. He noticed Michael quietly working his unobtrusive way back to the position where Alice had left him, wiping his moustache with satisfaction.
“Monty,” said Mrs. Harrington, “I don’t think you’ve ever met my very best friend, Miss Cartwright.”
“How do you do,” the girl said smiling.
“Be kind to him, Ethel,” Michael remarked genially. “He’s a nice boy and the idol of the Paris Bourse.”
“And an awful flirt,” Nora chimed in. “If I had had a heart he would have broken it long ago.”
“Do you know,” Alice said, “it has never occurred to me to think of Monty as a flirt. Are you a flirt, Monty?”
“No,” he said indignantly.
“You needn’t be so emphatic when I ask you,” she said reprovingly. She sighed. “I suppose it’s one of the penalties of age. I’ve known him a disgracefully long time, Ethel, before the Palisades were grown-up.”