“I hope so, too,” he managed to say, with so little fervor and so successful an imitation of her politely detached interest in convention that she raised her eyes.  They dropped immediately, because his quiet voice and speech scarcely conformed to the uncontrolled protest in his eyes.

For a moment she stood, passing the golden links through her white fingers like a young novice with a rosary.  Steps on the stairs disturbed them; the recessional had begun; four solemn persons filed out the area gate.  At the same moment, suave and respectful, her butler pro tem. presented himself at the doorway: 

“Luncheon is served, madam.”

“Thank you.”  She looked uncertainly at Brown, hesitated, flushed a trifle.

“I will stay here and admit the plumber and then—­then—­I’ll g-go,” he said with a heartbroken smile.

“I suppose you took the opportunity to lunch when you went out?” she said.  Her inflection made it a question.

Without answering he stepped back to allow her to pass.  She moved forward, turned, undecided.

“Have you lunched?”

“Please don’t feel that you ought to ask me,” he began, and checked himself as the vivid pink deepened in her cheeks.  Then she freed herself of embarrassment with a little laugh.

“Considering,” she said, “that we have been chasing cats on the back fences together and that, subsequently, you dug me out of the coal in my own cellar, I can’t believe it is very dreadful if I ask you to luncheon with me....  Is it?”

“It is ador—­it is,” he corrected himself firmly, “exceedingly civil of you to ask me!”

“Then—­will you?” almost timidly.

“I will.  I shall not pretend any more.  I’d rather lunch with you than be President of this Republic.”

The butler pro tem. seated her.

“You see,” she said, “a place had already been laid for you.”  And with the faintest trace of malice in her voice:  “Perhaps your butler had his orders to lay two covers.  Had he?”

“From me?” he protested, reddening.

“You don’t suspect me, do you?” she asked, adorably mischievous.  Then glancing over the masses of flowers in the center and at the corners of the lace cloth:  “This is deliciously pretty.  But you are either dreadfully and habitually extravagant or you believe I am.  Which is it?”

“I think both are true,” he said, laughing.

And a little while later when he returned from the basement after admitting Mr. Quinn, the plumber: 

“Do you know that this is a most heavenly luncheon?” she said, greeting his return with delightfully fearless eyes.  “Such Astrakan caviar!  Such salad!  Everything I care for most.  And how on earth you guessed I can’t imagine....  I’m beginning to think you are rather wonderful.”

They lifted the long, slender glasses of iced Ceylon tea and regarded one another over the frosty rims—­a long, curious glance from her; a straight gaze from him, which she decided not to sustain too long.