“I had my pretty niece to look at.”
The rose in Minna’s cheeks deepened and her eyes fell shyly.
“Now you are teasing me again,” she said.
Grey turned an uninterested gaze for a brief space on the sun-god and his chariot which, surrounded by tritons, nymphs, and dolphins, rose in heroic proportions from the centre of the basin.
“I never knew much of my Uncle Schlippenbach,” he ventured, after a little; “tell me about him.”
“You should know more than I,” the Fraülein returned. “You were in New York with him while I was in England.”
“Yes, I know,” her companion went on, as he took a cigarette from his case and struck a match, “but I don’t mean intimately, personally. Tell me a little of his history.”
“Everybody knew he was eccentric.”
“Of course.”
“Otherwise he would never have left Budavia. Just think of what he gave up!”