Being a gentleman, Gerard compelled his expression to evidence pleasant acquiescence. But he was not soothed by the unclouded smile Flavia sent her designated escort.
"Corrie doesn't mind taking me, do you, dear?" she covered her brother's chagrin.
"I surely don't, Other Fellow," he heartily corroborated, coming across to his sister, although the change in his transparent face betrayed his discomfiture at the slight. "You and I have had many a good spin. In you go! Come up behind, Rupert; there is more room here than on the other machine."
"I think Mr. Rupert would rather ride with us, anyhow," Flavia declared, her laughing eyes questioning the mechanician. "I fancied, once or twice on the way over, that he would have preferred to have you or Mr. Gerard driving."
"I ain't making any scornful denials," admitted Rupert, as he stepped in front to crank the motor for Corrie. "I've always looked forward to being killed in a larger machine, myself."
Isabel did not at once enter her own car.
"I can't fasten this glove without taking off the other, and then I can't fasten the other without taking off this," she complained. "I really believe----"
So, the last the three in the departing roadster saw of the two on the pier, Allan Gerard was engaged in buttoning Isabel's glove, while her wind-blown veils fluttered across his shoulders and her flushed, provocative face bent over the task beside his.
Isabel, in the clinging knitted coat that displayed every attractive line of her athletic figure, her cheeks reddened by triumph and the salt wind, her gray eyes lifted in challenging coquetry, was a sufficiently pleasant sight to dispel mere vexation. And Gerard had no right to feel more than annoyance at a disappointment of which she supposedly knew nothing.
"I ran away with you because I didn't want to ride home with Corrie," she confided, when the last button-hole was achieved. "You don't mind--much?"
"I am overwhelmed by the honor," Gerard assured. He was neither surly enough to refuse the light play to which she invited him, nor anchorite enough to be insensible to the flattery of being sought. "But how did Prince Corrie offend his sovereign lady?"
"Oh, that would be telling! You know, we are _not_ engaged."