When they have dismissed the butler, and declared their ability to help one another, Lady Chetwoode says pleasantly:
"Now tell me everything. Had you an agreeable evening?"
"Too agreeable!" answers Cyril, with suspicious readiness: "I fear it will make all other entertainments sink into insignificance. I consider a night at Mrs. Boileau's the very wildest dissipation. We all sat round the room on uneasy chairs and admired each other: it would perhaps have been (if possible) a more successful amusement had we not been doing the same thing for the past two months,—some of us for years! But it was tremendously exciting all the same."
"Was there no one to meet you?"
"My dear mother, how could you suspect Mrs. Boileau of such a thing!"
"Yes,—there was a Mr. Boer," says Florence, looking up blandly from her chicken, "a man of very good family,—a clergyman——"
"No, a curate," interrupts Cyril, mildly.
"He made himself very agreeable," goes on Florence, in her soft monotone, that nothing disturbs. "He was so conversational, and so well read. You liked him, Lilian?"
"Who? Mr. Boer? No; I thought him insufferable,—so dull,—so prosy," says Lilian, wearily. She has hardly heard Miss Beauchamp's foregoing remarks.
"His manner, certainly, is neither frivolous nor extravagant," Florence returns, somewhat sharply, "but he appeared sensible and earnest, rare qualities nowadays."