Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/157

 Miss Orbison looked at her watch. "Dear me! It's almost tea-time already. Charles, you do have a silver tongue!"

"I think you mean it's metal because it can be used so long without wearing out," he said; and glancing over his shoulder, he shook his head. "There's a gentleman I fear thinks it must be of iron; I hadn't noticed him. He has the air of a long-suffering poet, waiting a chance to speak to Miss Ambler."

The gentleman was Arturo Liana. He stood by the precipice railing, fiddling pensively with his straw hat and a walking stick, too patiently courteous to interrupt by a closer approach. Claire was not pleased to remember that she had determined to be nice to him; for now, at last, the man at her side had become infinitely more to her than the man at a distance. She gave the invalid a softly reproachful glance eloquent of her meaning: "All right," she said to him, entirely in this ocular demonstration. "I'll obey you and be an angel to him; but it's foolish and drags me miserably away from you."

What she said with her voice was less pathetic, though she sighed as she rose. "I suppose so. Probably wants me to take a walk. Oh, very well!"

She gave the man in the chair another look, one