ear Willie!"

The diplomat, who is known to be a diplomat, is at once under a heavy
handicap. Daisy was instantly detected, and Lady Nottingham, since there
was no direct question to reply to, preserved silence. Then, after a
sufficient pause, she asked,--

"Have you settled about Willie, dear?"

"Ye-es. It will be better if he takes Gladys in."

"Then he's settled for," said Lady Nottingham, turning over a page in
her book.

This did not suit Daisy; she had meant to make Aunt Alice ask leading
questions, instead of which she only gave the most prosaic answers. She
sighed.

"Poor Willie!" she said.

Aunt Alice laughed quietly and comfortably.

"Dearest Daisy," she said, "as you want to tell me about Willie, why
don't you do so? I suppose you want me to ask instead. Very well, it
makes no difference. I imagine he has proposed again to you, and that
you have refused him, and want to be quite sure I think you are wise
about it. You see, you said, 'Dear Willie' first, and 'Poor Willie'
afterwards. What other inference could a reasonable woman like me draw?
If you hadn't wanted to talk about it, you would have said neither the
one nor the other. Hadn't you better begin?"

Daisy laughed.

"I think you are a witch," she said. "Oh, one moment; the table is
coming right. Yes, and me at the end."

"And Lord Lindfield on your left," said Lady Nottingham, without looking
up.

That was the end of Daisy's diplomacy.

"You would have been burnt at the stake two hundred years ago,
darling Aunt Alice," she said. "I should have helped to pile the
faggots."

"What a good thing I wasn't born earlier," said she. Then for a
moment she thought intently; what she wanted to say next required
consideration. "Daisy dear," she said, "I wanted to talk to you
also, and if you had not been so very diplomatic I should have
begun."

"Oh, I wish I had waited," said Daisy.

"Yes. But it makes no difference. What you want is my advice to you as
to whether you should accept Lord Lindfield. I quite agree with you that
he is going to propose to you. Otherwise he has been flirting with you
disgracefully, and I have never known him flirt with a girl before."

Lady Nottingham put her book quite completely down. She wanted to
convey certain things quite clearly but without grossness.

"Now, Daisy, you are very young," she said, "but in some ways you are
extremely grown-up. I mean, I think you know your own mind very well. I
wish very mu