“Ah, yes; Bella told me that Bella herself, indeed, only learned to feel an interest in them through me; but, as I told her, the woman who would one day be an ambassadress cannot afford to be ignorant of the great European game in which her husband is a player.”
“Quite true; but I have no such ambitions before me; and fortunate it is, for really I could not rise to the height of such lofty themes.”
Skeff smiled pleasantly; her humility soothed him. He turned to the last paragraph he had penned and re-read it.
“By the way,” said Alice, carelessly, and certainly nothing was less apropos to what they had been saying, though she commenced thus,—“by the way, how did you find Tony looking,—improved, or the reverse?”
“Improved in one respect; fuller, browner, more manly, perhaps, but coarser; he wants the—you know what I mean—he wants this!” and he swayed his arm in a bold sweep, and stood fixed, with his hand extended.
“Ah, indeed!” said she, faintly.
“Don't you think so—don't you agree with me, Alice?”
“Perhaps to a certain extent I do,” said she, diffidently.
“How could it be otherwise, consorting with such a set? You 'd not expect to find it there?”
Alice nodded assent all the more readily that she had not the vaguest conception of what “it” might mean.