"Why, that you should have that conviction. When one sees any one so sporting—"
I began to get her idea.
"Oh, I'm not sporting. I'm a perfect coward. But a sheep will make a stand when it's put to it."
With her hands in her sable muff, her shapely figure was inclined slightly toward me.
"I'm not sure that a sheep that makes a stand isn't braver than a lion. The man my sister Janet is engaged to—he's in the Inverness Rangers—often says that no one could be funkier than he on going into action; but that," she continued, her face aglow, "didn't prevent his being ever so many times mentioned in despatches and getting his D. S. O."
"Please don't put me into that class—"
"No; I won't. After all a soldier couldn't really funk things, because he's got everything to back him up. But you haven't. And when I think of you sitting here all by yourself, and expecting that great big rich Mr. Brokenshire and Ethel, and all of them, to come to your terms—"
To get away from a view of my situation that both consoled and embarrassed me, I said:
"Thank you, Lady Cecilia, very, very much; but it isn't what you meant to say when you began, is it?"
With some confusion she admitted that it wasn't.