"Well?" she persisted, troubled by this look of his, and this silence.
"Look here," he began, "I have to be away a couple of days and I wish you'd do me a favor."
Flora's thought flew to the ring. Was he going to ask for it back, to have it reset, as he had promised on the threshold of the goldsmith's shop? Here might be the chance she had hoped for of getting rid of it. She grasped at it before she had time to waver.
"I wonder if it's the very favor I was going to ask of you."
But he didn't take it up. He seemed hardly to hear her, as if his mind was too much absorbed with quite another question--a question that the next moment came out flat. "What was that Kerr doing here yesterday?"
She was taken aback, so far had her apprehension of Harry's jealousy slipped into the background in the last twenty-four hours. But her consciousness that Harry was not behaving well, even for a jealous man, made her take it up all the more lightly.
"Why, he was calling, chatting, taking tea--what anybody else would do from four to six. What in the world gave you the idea that he was doing anything extraordinary?"
"Well," he said, "you shouldn't do the sort of thing that makes you talked about."
"'That makes me talked about'?" It made her pause in front of him.
"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge; look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she, 'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated. "That's a nice thing to hear."
Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.
"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"
"It's all very well to say that--and you know I've never made a row about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of _them_."