"Porcine?" asked Lady Richard.
"No. I haven't got an animal for him. Well, yes, he was a little weaselly perhaps. But——" She glanced at Lady Richard as she paused, and then appeared to think that she would say no more; she frowned slightly and then smiled.
"I like his cheek!" exclaimed Fanny with a simplicity that had survived the schoolroom.
Lady Richard screwed her small straight features into wrinkles of disgust and a shrug seemed to run all over her little trim smartly-gowned figure; no presumption could astonish her in Quisanté.
"Why in the world did you listen to him, May?" Fanny went on.
"He interested me. And every now and then he was objectionable in rather an original way."
With another shrug, inspired this time by her friend's mental vagaries, Lady Richard diverged to another point.
"And that was where you were all the time Weston Marchmont was looking for you?" she asked.
May began to laugh. "Somehow I'm generally somewhere else when Mr. Marchmont looks for me," she said. "It isn't deliberate, really; I like him very much, but when he comes near me, some perverse fate seems to set my legs moving in the opposite direction."
"Well, Alexander Quisanté's a perverse fate, if you like," said Lady Richard.