"Charming young person, that!" said Lady Runton's neighbor to her. "One of our future Duchesses, I suppose?"
Lady Runton smiled.
"Lots of money, Teddy," she answered. "What a pity you haven't a title!"
The young man—he was in the Foreign Office—sighed, and shook his head.
"Such things are not for me," he declared sententiously. "My affections are engaged."
"That isn't the least reason why you shouldn't marry money," her ladyship declared, lighting a cigarette. "Go and talk to her!"
"Can't spoil sport!" he answered, shaking his head. "By Jove! Duncombe is making the running, though, isn't he?"
Her ladyship raised her glasses. Duncombe and Miss Fielding had strolled outside the barn. He was showing her his house—a very picturesque old place it looked, down in the valley.
"It's nothing but a farmhouse, of course," he said. "No pretensions to architecture or anything of that sort, of course, but it's rather a comfortable old place."
"I think it is perfectly charming," the girl said. "Do you live there all alone? You have sisters perhaps?"