"I had no idea, no notion at all, that you knew Mr. Van Adam."

"Oh yes."

"Besides, I fully understood he was in Florida."

"Oh no."

"This makes my paragraph all wrong."

"Oh yes."

"It is really most unfortunate."

"Oh no."

Mrs. Verulam felt like a pendulum, and that she would go on helplessly alternating affirmatives and negatives for the next century or two. But Mr. Rodney, who, being of a very precise habit, was seriously upset by being given the lie direct—in tweed, too, on a London afternoon of May!—repeated "Oh no!" in accents of such indignant amazement that Mrs. Verulam was obliged to recover her equilibrium.

"Oh yes, I mean," she said. "Oh yes, yes, yes!"

This repetition signified the approach of hysteria. The young gentleman in the tweed suit rapidly intervened.

"My kind hostess's invitation lured me from my[Pg 49] orange-groves," he said, in his deep contralto voice, fixing his large dark eyes with a hypnotic expression upon Mrs. Verulam.

[Pg 49]

"Oh," the Duchess said, "then you are staying with Mrs. Verulam?"

"Yes," said the young gentleman, still looking at Mrs. Verulam.

"Oh yes," she began feebly. "Oh yes, yes——"

"Might I ask for a cup of tea, Mrs. Verulam?" he exclaimed, in what might, with but slight exaggeration, be called a voice of thunder.

"Certainly," she answered, putting about fifteen lumps of sugar with a shaking hand into the nearest cup. "You don't take sugar, I think?"

"Gouty?" said her Grace. "Ah, you and Pearl would sympathise. Let me introduce you to my girl. Mr. Van Adam—Lady Pearl McAndrew."

Bows.

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