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FLAMING

YOUTH

195

tentionally revealed to this shrewd observer. “I was twenty-eight then,” she pursued, “and I found you a dangerous wooer, even though I knew it was not pour le bon mottf. Pat isn’t nineteen yet.” “Mademoiselle has taken the ordering of this matter into her own hands?” he queried mildly. “Dieu m’en garde!” she laughed. “It is as an old friend of yours that I speak.” “Then I am prepared for the worst,” he sighed.

“Strike!” “Still of a pretty wit.” She spoke sharply, but her eyes were not without kindness for him. “Danger, Mr. Cary Scott! Danger!” He did not pretend to misunderstand. “Let me assure you that I am not wholly without principle, Miss Fentriss.” “You? Granted. But what of Pat? Has my scapegrace little witch of a niece any principles whatever? I doubt it.” So, after all, he had misunderstood.

“Are you, then,

warning me of danger to myself? C'est a rire, n’est-ce pas?” “It is not to laugh at all. I am serious. I have been watching you this evening when you were with Pat and when you were only following her with your eyes. Your expression is not always guarded, if one has learned to read the human face.” He flushed. ‘Then there came upon him the reckless desire to ease his soul of the secret which filled it. She had invited it, and he instinctively knew that to this serene, poised, self-sufficing, sage woman

of the world he

could speak in the assurance of sympathy and without fear of incomprehension or betrayal.

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