Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/127

 "Well, what about him?" Fanny's tone changed perceptibly, and her expression grew cold and forbidding.

"Nothing particular—unless it's impertinent—so I won't ask it."

"You won't?" asked Fanny, slackening her pace and looking hard at him. "Not if I ask you to?"

"No," answered Lawrence. "I'd oblige you by asking a different question, but not that one. You wouldn't know the difference."

"That's ingenuous, at all events." She looked away again and laughed.

"I never fight when I can help it, and you looked dangerous just now. You always are, in one way or another."

"What do you mean?"

"Only that when you don't happen to be frightening me out of my wits, you are charming me into a perfect idiot."

"Something between an express train and the Lorelei," laughed Fanny.

But the quick, girlish blood had sprung to her sunny cheeks and lingered a moment, as though it loved the light. They were now in the