"Isn't Eleanor absurd?" said Lydia. "She loves so to be superior--'Order my carriage'--like the virtuous duchess in a melodrama." "She doesn't seem absurd to me," said Bobby. "Oh, you've been tiptoeing about binding up everybody's wounds, I suppose," she answered. "Did you tell them that you knew I didn't mean a word I said? Ah, yes, I see you did. Well, I did mean every single word, and more. Upon my word, I wish you'd mind your own business, Bobby." "I will," said Bobby, and got up and left the room. He went out and walked quickly up and down the flat stones under the grape arbor. The moon was not up, and the stars twinkled fiercely in the crisp cool air. He thought of other women--lovelier and kinder than Lydia. What kept him in this bondage to her? All the time he was asking the question he was aware of her image in her orange tea gown against the dark woodwork of the room, and suddenly, before he knew it--certainly before he had made any resolve to return--he was back in the doorway, saying, "Would you like to play a game of piquet?" She nodded, and they sat down at the card table. Bobby's faint resentment had gone in ten minutes, but it was longer before Lydia, laying down her cards, said, as if they had just been talking about her misdeeds instead of merely thinking about them, "But Benny is awfully obstinate, isn't she? I mean the way she goes on doing things the way she thinks I ought to like them instead of finding out the way I do like." "She's very sweet--Benny is." "And that's just what makes everyone think me so terrible--the contrast. She's sweet, but she wants her own way just the same. Whereas I----" "You don't want your own way, Lydia?" They nearly fought it out all over again. This time it was Lydia who stopped the discussion with a sudden change of manner. "The truth is, Bobby," she said with an unexpected gentleness, "that I feel dreadfully about Evans. You don't know how fond you get of a person who's about you all the time like that." "Horrid that they'll rob you, isn't it?" "Yes." Lydia stared thoughtfully before her. "I think what I mind most is that she wouldn't tell me--kept denying it, as if I were her enemy--and then in the first second she confessed to the district attorney." "Oh, well, that's his profession." She seemed to think profoundly, and her next sentence surprised him. "Do you think there's anything really between him and Eleanor? I couldn't bear to have Eleanor marry a man like that." Bobby, trying to be tactful, answered that he was sure Eleanor wouldn't, but as often happens to consciously tactful people, he failed to please. "Oh," said Lydia, "you mean that you think he's crazy about her?" "Mercy, no!" said Bobby. "I shouldn't think Eleanor was his type at all, except perhaps as a friend. It's the chorus-girl type that really stirs him." "Oh, is it?" said Lydia, and took up the cards again.