et? He's a melancholy sort,--about as cheerful
as a hearse. Feeling as I do this morning I think I'd rather like to see
him; but I hope to feel better soon."

"No; he hasn't been there yet. Marian tried to get him out for dinner,
but some other friends were to dine with her so he wouldn't come."

"He's a queer one,--but that reminds me: that Cosden man is in town."

"He is?" Edith exclaimed, arresting her coffee-cup on its way to her
lips and poising it in mid-air. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I couldn't until now; it was only yesterday I saw him. He was much more
civil than in Bermuda. Wanted to know about you and all that sort of
thing. He's going to telephone you before he goes back."

"Very kind of him, I'm sure," Edith sniffed. "Perhaps I'll be in and
perhaps I won't."

"Well that's your affair; you needn't see him on my account. But if you
were to ask me, I'd say he's not such a bad sort."

"I didn't ask you, Ricky," Edith said significantly, and Stevens, with
precedent to guide him, refrained from further discussion of the topic.

Yet in spite of the snap in her eyes when she commented on Cosden's
inquiry it so happened that she was in when he telephoned, and she was
also at home, arrayed in her most fetching afternoon gown, when he
called an hour later. Not that he would notice whether she wore gingham
or alpaca, she told herself, but she owed it to her self-respect to
appear her best.

She had expected to see Cosden in his business suit with bulky contracts
and other papers bulging from his pockets, rushing in and out again like
a hurricane; but instead she beheld him entirely at his ease in cutaway
and silk hat, with immaculate grey spats over his patent-leather boots.
He carried himself with an air quite different from that she had become
familiar with in Bermuda, and the reception she had planned for
him--brief, matter-of-fact and bristling with satire--required a certain
modification.

"I wasn't looking for a social call," Edith said guardedly after a
non-committal greeting. "I thought perhaps you had some business matter
to discuss."

"Still unforgiving!" Cosden smiled. "What can I do to make you
forgetful?"

"Of what?" Edith asked with well-feigned surprise.

"Then suppose we assume that you have forgotten."

"Aren't you over here on business?"

"Yes; and pleasure, too. This is the pleasure."

Her mystification was genuine. Was this the self-assertive, vivified
piece of machinery