[Pg 41]

"No, but Mr. Livingston or Mr. Devereux can tell you; either will speak for me."

Lady Garribardine was amused; she digressed a little from her cross-examination.

"You found Jews agreeable to work with?"

"Very. You know where you are with them. They do not pretend, and they are very generous."

"In-deed!"

"Yes—people have a preconceived notion of Jews, I find—quite faulty as a rule—they know what to pay for—they are far less fools than other races. I respect them."

"That is most interesting."

Katherine was silent again.

"Why did you leave them?"—after a pause in which Lady Garribardine was pitilessly scrutinising her possible secretary.

"Because I had learned all that I could there, and I wanted a new vista——"

"And you think you would find it with me?"

"With any lady in your world—you can learn things wherever you go, if you wish to."

"Very true. And how about French—you speak that?"

Katherine Bush reddened a little. A memory came to her of the profound shock that the French of Paris had been to her ear.

"I can write it quite correctly—but I have discovered that my pronunciation is ridiculous." She confessed it quite frankly.

"How did that happen?"

"I taught it to myself—mostly—and then I heard it spoken—and I knew mine would sound wrong."

"Do you think you could overcome that?"

[Pg 42]

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