"I had to take care of that girl. She fainted."
"Oh, you did? Who was she? What did you do with her? However, I don't care. It's none of my business. I wonder, though, what sort of a story you'd have told Berenice if she'd been there."
Wynne was too confused to answer this sally, although he wanted to say something about the cruelty of taking him into the ball-room. His confusion increased Mrs. Wilson's amusement.
"I think I should like to be in at the death," she said. "She is coming down to stay with me next week. Come down and make love to her. I won't tell about the girl you carried out of church in your arms."
More and more disconcerted and self-conscious, Maurice could only stammer that Mrs. Wilson flattered him if she supposed that Miss Morison would tolerate any love-making on his part.
"You are adorable when you blush like that," was the reply which he got. "I have almost a mind to set you to make love to me. However, that wouldn't be fair. I will take it out in seeing you and her. You must surely come down."
Maurice regarded the invitation as merely part of Mrs. Wilson's badinage, but in due time it was formally repeated by note. He opened the letter at the breakfast table, and was advised by his cousin to accept.
"Mrs. Wilson," she commented, "is like a banjo, more exciting than refined, but she isn't bad-hearted. She has the old Boston blood and traditions behind her."
"They are sometimes rather far behind," interpolated Mr. Staggchase dryly. "She wasn't a Beauchester, you know. However, she has her ancestors safe in their graves so that they can't escape her."
Mrs. Staggchase smiled good-naturedly at the little fling at her own family pretensions.