"Nor mine," admitted Carl. "As an aesthete I must own that Starrett is too fat for a really graceful villain. I fancied you were indefinitely domiciled at the farm. Aunt Agatha has been fussing--"
"I was," nodded Diane. "A whim of mine brought me home."
Carl dropped easily into a chair and glanced at his cousin's profile. The delicate oval of her face was firelit; her night-black hair one with the deeper shadows of the room. There was mystery in the lovely dusk of Diane's eyes--and discontent--and something mute and wistful crying for expression.
"I've a proposition to make," said Carl lightly. "It's partly commercial, partly belated justice, partly eugenic and partly personal."
"Your money is quite gone, is it not?" asked Diane, raising finely arched expressive eyebrows.
"It is," admitted Carl ruefully. "My career as a bibulous meteor is over. Last night, after an exquisite shower of golden fire, I came tumbling to earth in the fashion of meteors, a disillusioned stone. In other words--stone broke. May I smoke?"
"Assuredly."
Carl lighted a cigarette.
"And the proposition which is at the same time commercial, eugenic and--er--personal?" reminded Diane curiously. Carl ignored the delicate note of sarcasm.
"It is merely," he said with a flash of impudence, "that you will marry me."
Diane's eyes widened.
"How frankly commercial!" she murmured.
"Isn't it?" said Carl. "And an excellent opportunity for belated justice as well. My mother, save for our infernal Salic law of inheritance, was entitled to half the Westfall estate."
Diane stared curiously at the fire-rimmed hem of her satin skirt. There was something of Carl's lazy impudence in the arch of her eyebrows.
"There yet remains the eugenic inducement and, I believe, a personal one!" she hinted.
"Thank heaven," exclaimed Carl devoutly, "that we're both logicians. The eugenic consideration is that by birth and brains and breeding I am your logical mate."
Diane's eyes flashed with swift contempt.
"Birth!" she repeated.
The black demon of ungovernable temper leaped brutally from Carl's eyes. Leaning forward he caught the girl's hands in a vicious grip that hurt her cruelly though for all her swift color she did not flinch.
"Listen, Diane," he said, his face very white; "if there is one thing in this rotten world of custom and convention and immoral morality which I honestly respect, it is the memory of my mother. Therefore you will please abstain from contemptuous reference to her by look or word."
Diane met the clear, compelling rebuke of his fine eyes with unwavering directness.
"My mother," said Carl steadily, "was a fine, big, splendid woman, unconventional like all the Westfalls, and a century ahead of her time. Moreover, she had a code of morality quite her own. If Aunt Agatha's shocked sensibilities had not eliminated her from your life so early, contact with her broad understanding of things would have tempered your sex insularity." He glanced pityingly at Diane. "You've fire and vision, Diane," he said bluntly, "but you're intolerant. It's a Westfall trait." He laughed softly. "How scornfully you used to laugh and jeer at boys, because you were swifter of foot and keener of vision than any of them, because you could leap and run and swim like a wild thing! Intolerance again, Diane, even as a youngster!"