Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/308

298 we ought to have bowed the knee to the proprieties as soon as we got Driver's first cheek."

"The proprieties have nothing to do with it!" she said sharply.

"Then why on earth are you going?" I said, in an unaffected surprise.

"I've been in your way long enough; I see it now."

"What nonsense is this?" I said.

"It isn't nonsense. I know now why that—that—girl never came again to tea."

"Oh!" I said, taken aback, and bewildered by the dazzling flood of light which poured in upon my mind. Then I cried hotly, "It's blazing nonsense! She didn't come, because I didn't want her!"

"Oh, yes, you did—you did, really. And—and you ought to have told me. It wasn't fair," and for the first time she looked at me, her gray eyes very dark and burning, her face pale.

I did not know what I had done to provoke this wrath, and before I could ask, she turned, and went down the stairs. I hesitated a moment, then I went to the top of them and called twice, "Come back."

She did not come, and she did not answer. I went back to the sitting-room, with my anger rising in its turn. What had I done to earn such treatment? I heard the cabman carry down her