“What is that?”
“Because I should not like to stand in a dead man’s shoes, especially his. So, you see, I am safe, although Mrs. O’Hara has the double advantages of being a nonentity and a flatterer. Now will you let me help you down from your perch?”
“Wait just one minute. I want to ask you a very impertinent question first, if I may.”
“I grant you absolution beforehand,” he said, smiling, “on condition that you do not keep me in suspense.”
“I want to know,” she began hesitatingly, “whether if—supposing Mrs. O’Hara had not been your friend’s widow——”
“I should have cared for her?” put in the colonel, to help out her halting speech. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes; I am so absurdly curious, and I have always wondered if—if——”
Here she came to a full stop in dire confusion, for she had been going to add, “if that is the sort of woman you would care for;” and suddenly perceived that this would not do at all.
“I’ll answer your question when you are on terra firma,” replied Colonel Dacre, dodging to catch a glimpse of the piquant face among the leaves; “this is what I call a conversation under difficulties. By the by, you forgot to tell me why you got up there at all.”
“Bates’ bull put its head over the railing, and looked at my red cloak so viciously I dared not pass him. I had often climbed this tree with Reggie when I was a little girl, and had managed to give Fraulein von Linder the slip; and so I thought I would try it again to-day; but a gown with a train is embarrassing.”