But all roads lead to Rome and so did this one. "He declared it was all your own doing, and after the way you fought before, I——"
"Come along, let's go to your mother," I broke in, and linking my arm in hers I moved toward the drawing-room door. "Hans is one of the best; if he weren't, he wouldn't be so ready to give me the credit for what he himself did. But we can't have that, you know."
She held me back a moment. "What you said about him has done wonders with mother; changed her right round; and we're going together to the von Reblings. Oh, I do thank you so!" and being only a kid she squeezed my arm ecstatically.
I had to endure a bout of "heroizing," but something came out in the course of it that made me put my thinking cap on afterwards. Nita playing chorus to her mother's praise as she repeated some of the pretty things von Gratzen had said to her about me.
"I've never heard him speak in such a way of any one in my life before," she declared; "and he is so grieved about your extraordinary loss of memory. I think he is even rather provoked about it. He was in England as a young man, you know, and has made several visits there in later years."
"I did not know that," I said, pricking up my ears.
"He loves to talk of the country and the people, and, as you have just come from there, I am sure he is bitterly disappointed because you can't tell him about the things you saw and the people you met and all the rest of it."
"It would have been very interesting to me too," I said.
"You don't know how long you were there, I suppose?"
I shook my head. It seemed less mean somehow to do that than to lie outright in words; and it answered all the purpose quite as well.