"I did not believe it at first but I do now." She patted the seat of the small sofa she had dropped on.

"Come and sit here and talk to me a few minutes.

Girls will come and snatch you away presently but you can spare about three minutes." He did as he was told and wondered as he came nearer to the shell fineness of her cheek and her seraphic smile.
"I want you to tell me something about my only child," she said.
He hoped very much that he did not flush in his sometimes-troublesome blond fashion then.

He hoped so.
"I shall be most happy to tell you anything I have the honour of knowing," he answered.

"Only ask." "You would be capable of putting on a touch of Lord Coombe's little stiff air--if you were not so young and polite," she said.