"Then don't be unhappy any longer, Lady Angleford," he said. "There has been, and there need be, no quarrel between my uncle and me."
"Ah, now you make me happy!" she said; and she turned to him with a little flush on her face which made her prettier than ever. "I have been quite wretched whenever I thought of you or heard your name. People spoke of you as if you had died, or got the measles, with a kind of pity in their voices which made me mad and hate myself. You see, as I said, I didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't realize that I was coming between an hereditary legislator and his descendant and heir."
Drake could not help smiling.
"You had better not call my uncle an hereditary legislator, Lady Angleford. I don't think he'd like it."
"But he is, isn't he?" she said. "It is so difficult for an American to understand these things. We are supposed to have the peerage by heart; but we haven't. It's all a mystery and a tangle to us, even the best of us. But I try not to make mistakes. And now I want you to tell me that we are friends. That is so, isn't it?"
She held out her tiny and perfectly gloved hand with a mixture of timidity and impulsiveness which touched Drake.
"Indeed, I hope we are, Lady Angleford," he said.
She looked at him wistfully.
"You couldn't call me 'aunt,' I suppose?"
Drake laughed outright.