“Where are you going?”
“I thought you wanted to be alone.”
“Don’t be absurd! I don’t count you.”
“Perhaps Lady Victoria does,” Despencer suggested, with a rather nervous glance in her direction.
Lady Victoria did not condescend to return the look.
“Pray, don’t trouble yourself about me, Mr. Despencer,” she said, negligently. “I assure you I never know that you are in the room.”
“Don’t be rude, Victoria!” said her mother, more crossly than she had spoken yet. “Mr. Despencer is one of your best friends.”
“I suppose that means he has been saying something unpleasant about me?” was the retort.
Despencer ventured to interpose.
“I may be a poet, but my imagination doesn’t carry me so far as that,” he said, in his most insinuating tones.