Outwardly he looked somewhat ashamed of having inspired this unknown young lady's enthusiasm, but he did his confused best, on the spur of the moment, to carry off the situation as one of the contingencies 'to which the semi-public life of a popular novelist is always subject.
"Really, you are--much too good.

I can't imagine--if the case had been reversed--" Mr.Jasper found himself, accustomed as he was to the exigencies of London drawing-rooms, horribly in want of words.

And in the bow with which he further defined his discomfort he added to it by dropping the bit of stephanotis which he wore in his buttonhole.
Elfrida sprang to pick it up.

"Oh," she cried, "broken at the stem; see, you cannot wear it anymore.

May I keep it ?" A deadly silence had been widening around them, and now the daughter of the historian of the Semitic races broke it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan.