Loftus looked into Fanny’s eyes. “If you want to know, because you are all so deuced prim.”
“Ah!” and Fanny made a tantalizing little face, showing, as she did so, the point of her tongue. “Now tell me, what makes you think so?”
Across the table Annandale was talking to Sylvia Waldron. His manner was rather earnest, but his utterance had become a trifle thick.
“Oh, Arthur,” the girl at last interrupted him. “Don’t drink any more. You have had five glasses of champagne already.”
Heroically Annandale put his glass down. “Since you wish it, I won’t. But it does not hurt me. I can stand anything.”
“I am afraid it may grow on you.”
Annandale laughed. “Grow on me,” he repeated. “I like that. Why, I am cultivating it.”
Miss Waldron laughed too. “Yes, but you know you must not. I won’t let you.” Then at once, with that tact which was part of her, she changed the subject. “Doesn’t Fanny look well tonight?”
“Very. She is the prettiest girl in New York. But you are the best and the dearest. What is more, you are an angel.”
“To you I want to try to be.”
“Only,” resumed Annandale with a spark of the wit which is born of champagne, “don’t try to be a saint—it is a step backward.”
“Yes, Mrs. Loftus,” Orr was saying, “Miranda is fat, very fat. All mediums are. The fatter they are the more confidence you may have.”
Then there was more small talk. Courses succeeded each other. Sweets came and went. Presently Mrs. Loftus looked circuitously about and