"Besides, you may say what you like, but a gentleman ought to wear a good hat. It stamps him, Miss Gainsborough."
"Yours positively illuminates you. I could find the way by you on the darkest night."
"With just a leetle touch of oil——" he admitted cautiously, not quite sure how far she was serious in the admiration her eyes seemed to express. "What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, breaking off after his sufficient confession.
"I've been drawing up advertisements of my own accomplishments." She sat up suddenly. "Oh, why didn't I ask you to help me? You'd have made me sound eligible and desirable, and handsome and spacious, and all the rest of it. And I found nothing at all to say!"
"What are you advertising for?"
"Somebody who knows less French than I do. But I shall wait till we come back now." She yawned a little. "I don't in the least want to earn my living, you know," she added candidly, "and there's no way I could honestly. I don't really know any French at all."
Sloyd regarded her with mingled pleasure and pain. His taste was for more robust beauty and more striking raiment, and she—no, she was not neat. Yet he decided that she would, as he put it, pay for dressing; she wanted some process analogous to the thorough repair which he loved to see applied to old houses. Then she would be attractive—not his sort, of course, but still attractive.
"I wonder if you'll meet Madame Zabriska, the lady I let Merrion Lodge to, and the gentleman with her, her uncle."
"I expect not. My cousin invites us for the funeral. It's on Saturday. I suppose we shall stay the Sunday, that's all. And I don't suppose we shall see anybody, to speak to, anyhow." Her air was very careless; the whole thing was represented as rather a bore.