"I drifted into it, I am afraid," she answered, composedly.
"Drifted? No, I am sure you would never drift. You don't know how interested I am, Miss Campion, in the development of the human mind, or you would not try to evade the question. Now, which interests you most, poetry or prose?"
"That depends upon my mood; I am not sure that I am permanently interested in either," Lettice said, quietly.
Her hostess' observant eye was upon her for a moment; then Mrs. Hartley's face expanded in a benignant smile.
"Ah, I see you are very clever," she said. "I ask the question—not from idle curiosity, because I have representatives of both in the room at the present moment. There is a poet, whom I mean to introduce you to by and by, if you will allow me; and there is the very embodiment of prose close beside you, although I don't believe that he writes any, and, like M. Jourdain, talks it without knowing that it is prose."
Lettice glanced involuntarily at the man beside her, and glanced again. Where had she seen his face before? He was a rather stout, blonde man, with an honest open countenance that she liked, although it expressed good nature rather than intellectual force.
"Don't you remember him?" said Mrs. Hartley, in her ear. "He's a cousin of mine: Brooke Dalton, whose uncle used to live at Angleford. He has been wanting to meet you very much; he remembers you quite well, he tells me."
The color rose in Lettice's face. She was feminine enough to feel that a connecting link between Mrs. Hartley and her dear old home changed her views of her hostess at once. She looked up and smiled. "I remember Mr. Dalton too," she said.
"What a sweet face!" Mrs. Hartley said to herself. "Now if Brooke would only take it into his head to settle down——"
And aloud she added: "Brooke, come and be introduced to Miss Campion. You used to know her at Angleford."