"It does make things simpler, Mrs. Lenoir."
"Mind you, I wouldn't take a great name I hadn't a right to. Courtenays and Devereauxes in the chorus are very bad form. But I don't see why you shouldn't be Wilson. And the 'Miss' avoids a lot of questions."
"All right. Miss Winnie Wilson be it! It sounds like a new toy. And now, Mrs. Lenoir, for the other problem that Emily has raised. Who's the General?"
Mrs. Lenoir liked her young friend, but possibly thought that she was becoming a trifle impertinent. Not that she minded that; in her heart she greeted it as a rebound from misery; in the young it often is.
"If you've any taste in men—which, up to now, you've given your friends no reason to think—you'll like the General very much."
"Will he like me?"
"The only advantage of age is that I shan't mind if he does, Winnie."
Winnie darted towards her. "What a dear you've been to me to-day!"
"Hush, I think I hear the General's step."
The parlour-maid—not Emily, but a young woman, smart and a trifle scornful—announced, "Sir Hugh Merriam, ma'am—and dinner's served."