Page:Confidence (London, Macmillan & Co., 1921).djvu/75

 "He is certainly very handsome," murmured Blanche Evers, glancing several times with a very pretty aggressiveness at Captain Lovelock. "I must say I like Mr. Gordon Wright. Why in the world did you come here without him?" she went on, addressing herself to Bernard. "You two are so awfully inseparable. I don't think I ever saw you alone before."

"Oh, I have often seen Mr. Gordon Wright alone," said Captain Lovelock—"that is, alone with Miss Vivian. That's what the old lady likes; she can't have too much of that."

The young girl, poised for an instant in one of her pretty attitudes, looked at him from head to foot.

"Well, I call that scandalous! Do you mean that she wants to make a match?"

"I mean that the young man has six thousand a year."

"It's no matter what he has—six thousand a year isn't much! And we don't do things in that way in our country. We haven't those horrid match making arrangements that you have in your dreadful country. American mothers are not like English mothers."

"Oh, any one can see, of course," said Captain Lovelock, "that Mr. Gordon Wright is dying of love for Miss Vivian."

"I can't see it!" cried Blanche.

"He dies easier than I, eh?"

"I wish you would die!" said Blanche. "At any rate, Angela is not dying of love for Mr. Wright."

"Well, she will marry him all the same," Lovelock declared. Blanche Evers glanced at Bernard.

"Why don't you contradict that?" she asked. "Why don't you speak up for your friend?" 67