“Well, I mind.  Turn your head and I’ll take out that pin.”

“Don’t be silly, Randy.”

He persisted.  “Keep still while I take it out——­”

He found the pin and unwound the white cloth.  “There,” he said, drawing a long breath, “you look like yourself again.  You were so—­austere, you scared me, Becky.”

He was again hugging his knees.  “When are you going away?”

“On the twenty-ninth.  I shall stay over until next week for the Merriweathers’ ball.”

“I didn’t know whether you would feel equal to it.”

“I shall go on Mary’s account.  It will be her introduction to Truxton’s friends, and if I am there it will be easier for her.  She has a lovely frock, jade green tulle with a girdle of gold brocade.  It came down for me with a lot of other clothes, and it needed only a few changes for her to wear it.”

“You will be glad to get away?”

“It will be cooler—­and I need the change.  But it is always more formal up there—­they remember that I have money.  Here it is forgotten.”

“I wish I could forget it.”

“Why should you ever think of it?” she demanded with some heat.  “I am the same Becky with or without it.”

“Not quite the same,” he was turning his hat in his hand.  Then, raising his eyes and looking at her squarely, he said what he had come to say, “I have—­I have just been to see Dalton, Becky.”

A wave of red washed over her neck, touched her chin, her cheeks.  “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“It has a great deal to do with you.  I told him you were going to marry me.”

The wave receded.  She was chalk-white.

“Randy, how dared you do such a thing?”

“I dared,” said Randy, with tense fierceness, “because a man like Dalton wants what other men want.  He will think about you a lot, and I want him to think.  He won’t sleep to-night, and I want him to stay awake.  He will wonder whether you love me, and he will be afraid that you do—­and I want him to be afraid.”

“But it was a lie, Randy.  I am not going to marry you.”

“Do you think that I meant that——?  That I am expecting anything for myself?”

“No,” unsteadily, her slender body trembling as if from cold, “but what did you mean?”

“I told you.  Dalton’s got to come back to you and beg—­on his knees—­and he will come when he thinks you are mine——­”

“I don’t want him to come.  And when you talk like that it makes me feel—­smirched——­”

Dead silence.  Then, “It was a gentleman’s lie——­”

“Gentlemen do not lie.  Go to him this minute, Randy, and tell him that it isn’t true.”

“Give me three days, Becky.  If in that time he doesn’t try to see you or call you up, I’ll go——­ But give me three days.”

She wavered.  “What good will it do?”

He caught up her cold little hands in his.  “You will have a chance to get back at him.  And when you stick in the knife, you can turn it—­until it hurts.”