Graydon, I've a secret to tell you, which, for
an intense, aesthetic, and vaguely devotional woman, is a most
humiliating confession: I'm awfully hungry. When will dinner be
ready?"
"I have a secret to tell you also," he replied, with a half-vexed
flash in his eyes: "There is a girl in this house who explains
herself more or less every day, and who yet remains the most charming
conundrum that ever kept a man awake from perplexity."
"Oh, dear!" cried Madge, "is Miss Wildmere so bad as that? Poor, pale
victim of insomnia! By the way, do you and Mr. Arnault keep a ledger
account of the time you receive? or do you roughly go on the principle
of 'share and share alike'?" and with eyes flashing back laughter at
his reddening face, she ran up the steps and disappeared.
"That was a Parthian arrow," he muttered. "If we go smoothly on the
sharing principle at present, we shall soon go roughly enough, or
cease to go at all."
But the lady in question was putting forth all her resources, which
were not slight when enlisted in her own behalf, to keep the two men
_in statu quo_ until more time, with its chances, should pass.
Arnault smiled grimly when he saw her departing with Graydon. She had
been evasive, but very friendly, during the day thus far, and after
what he had said the preceding night he felt that he was committed to
her moods for a week if he could not bring her to a decision before.
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