David looked at the Duchess and shook his head.

"Honestly," he admitted, "I can't give an opinion. I thought I understood something of human nature before I came into touch with you and those few members of your aristocracy whom I have met through you. But frankly, to use a homely metaphor, you take the wind out of my sails. I don't know where I am when you lay down the law. There is something wrong between us fundamentally. I was brought up the same way Vont was brought up. Things were right or wrong, moral or immoral. You people seem to have made laws of your own."

"It's time some one revised the old ones," his companion laughed. "However, I can see that you can be no help to me about Reginald, and here we are at the Savoy. By-the-by, I've never seen you except with men. Have you no women friends? Are none of those charming little musical comedy ladies I see through the windows there expecting you as their host?"

"They look very attractive," David admitted, smiling back at his companion, "but I am, in reality, lunching alone. I came here because I know my stockbroker lunches every day in the grillroom, and I want to see him."

"How pathetic!" she sighed. "I really believe that I have a duty in connection with you."

"At any rate," he promised, as he held out his hand, "there is a man here who will serve us some American lobster which is very nearly the real thing."

"Don't make me feel too gluttonous," she begged, as she stepped out. "I really am not in the habit of inviting myself to luncheon like this, but the fact of it is--"

She hesitated. He passed behind her into the little vestibule.

"Well?"

"Well, I rather like you, Mr. David Thain," she whispered. "You won't be vain about it, will you, but all the financiers I have ever met have been so extraordinarily full of their money and how they made it. You are different, aren't you?"

"I am content if you find me so," he answered, with rare gallantry.

David ordered a thoroughly American luncheon, of which his guest heartily approved.

"If you Americans," she observed, "only knew how to live as well as you know how to eat, what a nation you would be!"

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