"I am sent by Mrs. Wilson," she announced, "to ask you to stay."
"You take some pains to clear yourself from the suspicion of having any
interest in the matter."
"'I am only a messenger,'" she quoted saucily, seating herself on the
rail of the piazza in the sunshine, and looking so piquant that Maurice
felt resolution and resentment oozing out of his mind with fatal
rapidity.
He flushed at her allusion to his ill-considered interview with her,
but he could not for his life be half so indignant as he wished to be.
"Apparently an indifferent messenger. You evidently do not care whether
I go or I stay."
"Why should I?"
"Why should Mrs. Wilson?" he retorted, not very well knowing what he
was saying.
"Oh, Mrs. Wilson is your hostess. Besides," Bee went on, a delightful
look of mischief coming into her face, "she said that she hated to have
her plans interfered with, and that you were so handsome that she liked
to have you about."
Maurice flushed with a strangely mixed sensation of pleased vanity and
irritation, and was angry with himself that he could not receive her
jesting unmoved.
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