"What about you, Sir Ralph? I may call you Sir Ralph, may I not?"
"Please. It's my name."
"Yes, I know it. But it sounds so familiar, from a stranger. I was wondering if one ought to say 'Sir Ralph Moray,' till one had been acquainted a little longer. Well, anyway, if you could dine with us, without your friend—"
I also thanked her and said that matters would arrange themselves more easily if Barrymore and I were together.
"Then can you both lunch with us to-morrow at one o'clock?"
Quickly, before Terry could find time to object if he meditated doing so, I accepted with enthusiasm.
Farewells were exchanged, and we had walked to the gate with the ladies—I heading the procession with Mrs. Kidder, Terry bringing up the rear with the two girls—when my companion stopped suddenly. "Oh, there's just one thing I ought to mention before you come to see us at the hotel," she said, with a little catch of the breath. Evidently she was embarrassed. "I introduced myself to you as Mrs. Kidder, because I'm used to that name, and it comes more natural. I keep forgetting always, but—but perhaps you'd better ask at the hotel for the Countess Dalmar. I guess you're rather surprised, though you're too polite to say so, my being an American and having that title."
"Not at all," I assured her. "So many charming Americans marry titled foreigners, that one is almost more surprised—"
"But I haven't married a foreigner. Didn't I tell you that I'm a widow? No, the only husband I ever had was Simon P. Kidder. But—but I've bought an estate, and the title goes with it, so it would seem like a kind of waste of money not to use it, you see."
"It's the estate that goes with the title, for you, Mamma," said Beechy (she invariably pronounces her parent "Momma"). "You know you just love being a Countess. You're happier than I ever was with a new doll that opened and shut its eyes."