Denis pretended to be interested only in a casual way. "What sort of a girl is—Baby?" he asked. "Is she like you?"
"I suppose she is like me to the same extent that I am like the Warrior," the girl replied. "But she's most like the Warrior herself. Imagine my mother at the age of seventeen and you know my sister. Surely you have seen that old photograph of the Warrior as a girl in the drawing-room? It is simply Baby over again,—or rather vice versa."
"I must look at it," said Denis thoughtfully.
"In fact they are so much alike," Cleopatra proceeded, "that they know each other inside out, and annoy each other accordingly."
"They don't get on well then?" he enquired.
"Oh, yes, but Baby's a little trying at times. You see, she will forget for instance that we call mother Edith, and have done ever since father died; and she will suddenly shout Mother! out loud on crowded railway platforms, or at the Academy, or worse still at garden parties, which always gives the Warrior one of those nervous attacks for which she has to go to Lord Henry."
Denis started almost imperceptibly at the mention of Lord Henry's name, and turned an interested face towards the girl. "Do you know Lord Henry?" he asked.
"No, I don't. There are some men the Warrior knows whom she never introduces to me. I feel as if I knew Lord Henry very well indeed, but I have never met him."
"You haven't lost much," Denis snapped.
"I beg your pardon?" Cleopatra exclaimed, smiling kindly but deprecatingly, and arching her neck a little, as she scented the injustice behind his remark.