"I fancy it's true—in the main," he said, half apologetically.
"Well, and if it is," she retorted impatiently, "of what interest can it be to us? We don't know the Earl of Angleford, and don't care a button that he is married, and that his nephew is—what do you say?—disinherited."
"N-o," he admitted.
"Very well, then," she said triumphantly. "It is like reading the doings of people living in the moon."
"The moon is a long ways off," he ventured.
"Not farther from us than the world in which these earls and lords have their being," she retorted. "It all seems so—so impertinent to me, when I am reading it. Of what interest can the lives of these people be to us, to me, Nell Lorton? I never heard of Lord Angleford, and Lord—what is it?—Lord Selbie, before; did you?"
He glanced at her, then looked fixedly through the window.
"I've heard of them—yes," he said reluctantly.
"Ah, well, you are better informed than I am," said Nell, laughing softly. "There's Dick; he's calling me. Do you mind being left? He will make an awful row if I don't go out."
"Certainly not. Go by all means!" he said. "And thank you for—all the trouble you have taken."