Richard shuddered as he thought of it.  He made constant efforts to engage her in personalities, but she evaded him.  There was a real thrill for him in the quiet dinner at the Hoyts’.  Mrs. Carter, said slow old bewhiskered John Hoyt, was an extremely pretty woman.  My wife—­Richard in answering called her that—­looks particularly well in an evening gown.  Indeed she looked exquisite in the blue and silver dress, laughing—­still with that adorable mist of strangeness and shyness about her—­with her neighbours at the table, and afterward in the drawing room, waving her silver fan slowly while Freda Hoyt, who quite obviously adored her, whispered her long confidences.

Coming home in the limousine they had neighbours with them, old Doctor and Mrs. Carmichael, so he might not have the word alone with her for which he had been longing all evening.  But he stopped her in the wide, dim hallway when they reached Crownlands.

“Tired?” he said, at the foot of the stairs.

“Not a bit!” There was an enchanting vitality about her.  She had slipped the thin wrap from her shoulders, and she turned to him her lovely, happy face.  “Did you want me?”

“I wanted to say something to you,” Richard said, feeling awkward as a boy.

“In there?” She nodded, suddenly alert, toward the library.

“Why in there?” he asked, with a little husky laugh.  His one impulse was to put his arms about her.

“I thought—­bills, perhaps?” Harriet said, innocently.  It was the third day of the month; he had often consulted her as to expenses before this.

“No,” Richard said, with another unsteady little laugh.  “It wasn’t bills.  I was just wondering—­if I had been very stupid,” he said, taking one of her hands, and looking up from the fingers that lay in his to the face that now wore an expression a little frightened despite the smile.

“Never with me!” Harriet said, in a low tone.

“Never so blind,” Richard said, “never so matter-of-fact that I hurt your feelings?  Nothing of—­that sort?”

“Always the kindest friend I ever had!” the girl answered, unsteadily, and with suddenly wet eyes.  “The—­the most generous!”

He looked at her hand again, looked up at her as if he would speak.  But instead she felt her fingers pressed, and felt her heart thump with a delicious terror.

“Do—­do you like the blue and silver dress?” she asked with an excited laugh.

“I like it better than any dress I have ever seen!” Richard answered, seriously.  Her hand free now, Harriet, standing on the lowest step, made him a little bow that displayed the frail silver fan, the silver slippers, the stockings with their silver lace.

“And wait until you see our frocks for the boat!” she warned him.  “Nina has a yellow coat—­and I have a black lace and a white embroidery!  Really—­really I have never seen anything like the white one.  Sheer, you know—­”