Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A DAUGHTER OF TYRE Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in his big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume greeted his senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet by no means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to him, and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence and with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy and beauty and bloom. " Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her hand rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You ran off with my opera- cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive one it was." "Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was un- purchasable." She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat this morning — before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of thanks for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera-cloak came back." "It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I didn't know it had been returned. I was out all the morning." "In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning. "Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak." "Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance. "Well, I got breakfast while I was looking." "And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid itself—or went out and hanged itself?" He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this very chair brought fr...