"It is about Leonetta," she added.
"Oh, yes," said Denis. He was completely dazed. He had just felt that "one touch of nature" which nowadays sets the whole world's teeth on edge,—Eve completely and cheerfully unscrupulous, Eve wild and untamed, cruel and heartless while her deepest passions are still unengaged,—and he felt like one bewitched.
"We wish to ask you," began Sir Joseph pompously.
"Please let me speak," interrupted the widow. "We have noticed,—nobody could have helped noticing,—that since you have been down here you have been paying my daughter Leo unusually marked attention."
"But surely you have also noticed—" Denis objected.
"One moment!" cried Mrs. Delarayne. "I do not say that Leo isn't attractive. I know she's exceedingly attractive,—so attractive that, I understand, even Lord Henry appears to have fallen a victim to her charm."
"Yes, and perhaps you have also heard—" the young man muttered with some agitation.
"I have heard everything," said the widow. "All I suggest is, that since Leo is still a child, and has not perhaps the strength to bear a heavy heart strain as easily as a girl of Cleopatra's age, we should like any attitude you choose to adopt towards her to be made perfectly plain from the start. Do you understand, Denis? I don't wish to be unfriendly."
"I can assure you," protested Denis, who had been rendered none too comfortable by the sting in Mrs. Delarayne's last remarks, "that all along I have always been in deadly earnest, I have always——"
"Hush!" cried the masterful matron. "I don't want to hear now what your sentiments are. All I want you to do is to be quite plain to my little daughter. Do you want to become engaged to her, or not?"