“You’re the throb of the evening, sweetheart,” Dick Rodley laughed down at her, as they stood at the door of the box with the function passing in and out.
“Thank you, Dicky dear,” she responded, smiling up at him. Since her earnest gaieties had begun, Dick had been her most frequent companion. He was one of the component members of that zestful little set composed of Gail, Lucile and Arly, and the bubbling little Mrs. Babbitt, the cherub-cheeked Marion Kenneth, the entirely sophisticated Gwen Halstead, and whatever nice men happened to be available. Dick and Ted and Gerald were, of course, always available.
“I’m disappointed,” complained Dick. “You don’t blush any more when I am affectionate with you.”
“One loses the trick here,” she laughed. “The demands are too frequent.”
“I’m going to propose to you again to-night,” he told her.
“You’re so satisfactory,” she returned carelessly. “But really, Dicky, I don’t see how you’re going to manage it, unless you perform it right here, and that’s so conventional.”
“Play hooky,” he mischievously advised. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You shoo Houston out of the house the minute you get in; then Lucile and Ted and Arly and Gerald and I will sail up and carry you off to supper, after which I’ll take you home and propose.”
Gail’s eyes snapped with the activity of that disloyal programme, and the little silvery laugh, for which she had been so noted, welled up from her throat.
“You have to wait around the corner until he goes away,” she insisted.
“I’ll bring a guitar if you like,” Dick promised, with so much avidity that she feared, for an instant, that he might do it.
“You’re monopolising me scandalously,” she protested. “Go away,” and she turned immediately to the dapper little marquis, who was enduring the most difficult evening of his life. Gail was so thoroughly adapted to a grand affair, one in which he could avow universes; and the Miss Van Ploon was so exacting.
The study door was open when Houston Van Ploon sedately escorted Mrs. Davies and Gail into the library, one of those rooms which appoint themselves the instinctive lounging places of all family intimates. Gail turned up her big eyes in sparkling acknowledgment as the punctilious Van Ploon took her cloak, and, at that moment, as she stood gracefully poised, she caught the gaze of the Reverend Smith Boyd fixed on her with such infinite longing that it distressed her. She did not want him to suffer.