“Have you seen much of her?”
Barth shook his head.
“No. It is only once that we have had any real talk together. That was yesterday, at the library. It’s a queer old place, and one talks there in spite of one’s self. We had a good time. But generally those other fellows are around in the way.”
The Lady raised her brows interrogatively.
“Mr. Brock and that Frenchman,” Barth explained. “They are always with her; they haven’t any hesitation in coming into the drawing-room and carrying her off, just as I am getting ready to talk to her.”
A blot on the Lady’s account book demanded her full attention for a moment. Then she looked up at Barth again.
“Why don’t you try the same tactics?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why don’t you carry her off, just as Mr. Brock is getting ready to talk to her?”
“Because he is so quick that he gets right about it, before I have time to begin. Mr. Brock has a good deal of the American way, himself,” Mr. Cecil Barth added, with an accent of extreme disfavor.