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y dark." "I don't wonder at her," said Lady Claire unforgivingly. "I'm sure he must have been horrid to her!" "I rather think she was horrid to him," Billy reflected, "although she was a very sprightly looking lady love. He showed me her picture in the back of his watch.... By _George_!" he uttered violently. "What is it?" "Oh--an idea, that's all. Something I must really attend to before I--this afternoon, I mean. But there's no hurry about it," he added cheerily. Oh, Billy, Billy! Not even with his blood hot with thoughts of the evening's work, not even with his memory ridden with Arlee's gay witchery, could he keep his restless young eyes from laughing down at her. But there wasn't a notion in the back of his honest head as to the picture he was making in Lady Claire's eyes as he leaned, long-limbed, broad-shouldered, lazily at ease against the desk, his gray eyes very bright between their dark lashes, his dark hair sweeping back from his wide forehead. "Are you sure?" she asked of him, with the smile that he drew from her. "Is it the inspiration for another picture?" "No, no--that was my first and my last. That was the one purple bloom of my art. I have laid my brushes by.... But I'm keeping you from that letter you were going to write." "It's just a few lines for Miss Falconer," Lady Claire unnecessarily explained. "We are going to drive out to the Gezireh Palace Hotel for tea, and she thought her brother might like to go out with us if he came in in time." She did not add why Miss Falconer was unable to write her own notes, but slanted her blue-hatted head over the desk and then hastily blotted her brief lines and tucked the sheet into an envelope. Hesitantly she looked up at Billy. "Have you been out to the Gezireh Palace?" she very innocently inquired. "Alone," said Billy. "It's very jolly there," said she. "It's so gay--and the music is _quite_ good." "H'm," meditated Billy. "The condemned man ate a hearty tea of Orange Pekoe and cress sandwiches," he reflected silently. He also reflected that Miss Falconer would be furious--and that invited him--and that time was interminable and that this expedition was as good a way of getting through the afternoon as any other. Thereupon he turned to the English girl, with a humorous challenge in his gaze. "I wonder if you and Miss Falconer would let this be my tea party?" he suggested. "Miss Falconer will be delighted," said Lady Claire m
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