by saying, to the company, "You have no idea how sweet and shy he was!"
This was more depressing to Grover than if she had been scornful. Why, he was furiously wondering, does every woman treat me as a minor!
The situation was just beginning to penetrate into the massive skull of the Swede. Over his heaped-up plate he leaned forward to look at Grover, apparently seeing him for the first time that day.
"So you are the young man we met on the sidewalk the night of the masquerade!"
Worse and worse, thought Grover, now thoroughly ill at ease. To him it seemed as though his most romantic secrets were being made public property and thereby forever damaged.
Olga rescued him from the necessity of relating the sequel to the torn stocking episode by remarking, with a narquoise implication, "He was with a very pretty blond girl."
"Grover Thanet!" exclaimed Floss. "The things I don't know about you! and never even suspected. Who was she?"
"Oh!" laughed Grover, now on his guard, "That was Marthe Lamielle," as who should say, that was Marthe Régnier, or Mary Garden, or Mistinguett. He had heard other people toss off a totally unknown name as though everybody would know who was meant, and he now had the satisfaction of seeing the expedient
