Oh, yes, she should have admiration and exclamation points to her heart's content, but he had come from his long exile hungry for something more and better than young lady friends.

He had long since had a surfeit of these semi-Platonic affinities.

The girl who apparently had been refusing scores of men for his sake was more to his taste.

His brother's repugnance only irritated and incited him, and he thought, "I'll carry out his business policy to the utmost, but away from the office I am my own man." As these thoughts passed through his mind, they began to impart to his manner a tinge of gallantry, the beginning of a departure from his old fraternal and affectionate ways.

He was too well-bred to show pique openly, or to reveal a sense of injury during the first hours of reunion, but he already felt absolved from being very attentive to a girl who not only had proved so conclusively that she could manage admirably for herself, but who also had been so indifferent that she had not needed his sympathy in her efforts or thought it worth while to gladden him with a knowledge of her progress.