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 and met them with her own. Henry shook them heartily, It might have seemed that he was going to presume a basis of familiarity as already established and kiss her; but he did not. Her action had been too naively trustful to be presumed upon. He merely swung her round him playfully—or started to.

"Gosh! my head!" he cried, and stood with one hand raised to the bandages while, with half-rueful expression, he gazed at the girl and laughed again. "You played me a good one, didn't you—didn't you?" he demanded, and then something. . . some triumphant quirk of the berry-red lips, something meaningful in her dark glance, a half-mystical twinkle of exultation as over a successful ruse, made him halt and stare at her—stare at her and divine: "You—you doped my broth, you little devil!"

The smile went out of Lahleet's face. She straightened proudly, a mild defiance in her glance as one who scorned to lie.

"You little aborigine! What did you do that for?" Harrington demanded, sternness not all simulated.

"To spite Miss Boland," she confessed coolly. "I do not like her. I saw you looking at her out of the window yesterday. I do not like designing women." A red spot enlarged in the center of each of Lahleet's cheeks, enlarged and burned, and a lip curled scornfully with the gleam of a white tooth that looked as if it could bite. Yet the little woman was so naively earnest, so childishly, so deliciously frank in her jealousy, that Henry could not even be resentful. He laughed, vastly amused.

"Designing? Fiddlesticks! On whom has she designs?"