to drink, but we gave them the cut
direct, though I recall vaguely the fizz of soda shooting from the
syphon, and afterwards holding a glass in my hand.

"Do you mind my saying what I think of Lady Blantock and her
daughter?" inquired Molly, with the meek sweetness of a coaxing
child. "Perhaps I oughtn't, but it would be a relief to my feelings."

"I wonder if it would to mine?" I remarked impersonally, addressing
the ancient tapestry on an opposite wall.

"Let's try, and see," persisted Molly. "Calculating Cats! There, it's
out. I wouldn't have eaten their old dinner, except to please you.
I've known them only thirteen days, but I could have said the same
thing when I'd known them thirteen minutes. Indeed, I'm not sure I
didn't say it to Jack. Did I, or did I not. Lightning Conductor?"

"You did," replied the person addressed, answering with a smile to the
name which he had earned in playing the part of Molly Randolph's
chauffeur, in the making of their love story.

"Women always know things about each other--the sort of things the
others don't want them to know," Molly went on; "but there's no use in
our warning men who think they are in love with Calculating Cats,
because they would be certain we were jealous. Of course I shouldn't
say this to you, Lord Lane, if you hadn't taken me into your
confidence a little--that night of my first London ball."

"It was the night I proposed to Nell," I said, half to myself.

"Sir Horace Jerveyson was at the ball, too."

"Talking to Lady Blantock."

"And looking at Miss Blantock. I noticed, and--I put things together."

"Who would ever have thought of putting those two together?"

"I did. I said to myself and afterwards to Jack--may I tell you what I
said?"

"Please do. If it hurts, it will be a counter-irritant."

"Well, Jack had told me such heaps about you, you know, and he'd
hinted that, while we were having our great romance on a motor car,
you were having one on toboggans and skates at Davos, so I was
interested. Then I saw her at the ball, and we were introduced. She
was pretty, but--a prize white Persian kitten is pretty; also it has
little claws. She liked you, of course, because you're young and
good-looking. Besides, her father was knighted only because he
discovered a new microbe or something, while you're a 'hearl,' as my
new maid says."

"A penniless 'hearl,'" I laughed.

"You must have plenty of pennies, for you seem to have everything a
man can