ty: "Look here, Lily, how
is a fellow ever to see anything of you? I'm in town three or four days
in the week, and you know a line to the club will always find me, but you
don't seem to remember my existence nowadays unless you want to get a tip
out of me."

The fact that the remark was in distinctly bad taste did not make it any
easier to answer, for Lily was vividly aware that it was not the moment
for that drawing up of her slim figure and surprised lifting of the brows
by which she usually quelled incipient signs of familiarity.

"I'm very much flattered by your wanting to see me," she returned,
essaying lightness instead, "but, unless you have mislaid my address, it
would have been easy to find me any afternoon at my aunt's--in fact, I
rather expected you to look me up there."

If she hoped to mollify him by this last concession the attempt was a
failure, for he only replied, with the familiar lowering of the brows
that made him look his dullest when he was angry: "Hang going to your
aunt's, and wasting the afternoon listening to a lot of other chaps
talking to you! You know I'm not the kind to sit in a crowd and jaw--I'd
always rather clear out when that sort of circus is going on. But why
can't we go off somewhere on a little lark together--a nice quiet little
expedition like that drive at Bellomont, the day you met me at the
station?"

He leaned unpleasantly close in order to convey this suggestion, and she
fancied she caught a significant aroma which explained the dark flush on
his face and the glistening dampness of his forehead.

The idea that any rash answer might provoke an unpleasant outburst
tempered her disgust with caution, and she answered with a laugh: "I
don't see how one can very well take country drives in town, but I am not
always surrounded by an admiring throng, and if you will let me know what
afternoon you are coming I will arrange things so that we can have a nice
quiet talk."

"Hang talking! That's what you always say," returned Trenor, whose
expletives lacked variety. "You put me off with that at the Van Osburgh
wedding--but the plain English of it is that, now you've got what you
wanted out of me, you'd rather have any other fellow about."

His voice had risen sharply with the last words, and Lily flushed with
annoyance, but she kept command of the situation and laid a persuasive
hand on his arm.

"Don't be foolish, Gus; I can't let you talk to me in that ridiculous
way. If you