She stood staring after him. She heard some one coming and she turned toward the house, and met Cornish leaving.
"Miss Di," he cried, "if you're going to elope with anybody, remember it's with me!"
Her defence was ready—her laughter rang out so that the departing Bobby might hear.
She came back to the steps and mounted slowly in the lamplight, a little white thing with whom birth had taken exquisite pains.
"If," she said, "if you have any fear that I may ever elope with Bobby Larkin, let it rest. I shall never marry him if he asks me fifty times a day."
"Really, darling?" cried Ina.
"Really and truly," said Di, "and he knows it, too."
Lulu listened and read all.
"I wondered," said Ina pensively, "I wondered if you wouldn't see that Bobby isn't much beside that nice Mr. Cornish!"
When Di had gone upstairs, Ina said to Lulu in a manner of cajoling confidence: