"I—I think not," he answered. "I should like you to meet her very much. She will be coming to London soon, and I know that she will be interested in our new scheme if it comes to anything. We will take her down and give her a few practical lessons in philanthropy."
"Will she be interested?" Mary asked.
"Immensely," he answered, with confidence. "Lady Caroom is an awfully good sort, too."
Mary remembered the well-bred insolence of Lady Caroom's stare, the contemplative incredulity which found militant expression in her beautiful eyes and shapely curving lips, and for a moment half closed her eyes.
"Ah, well," she said, "that afternoon was rather a terrible one to me.
Let us talk of something else."
He was profuse at once in apologies for his own thoughtlessness. But she checked him almost at the outset.
"It is I who am to blame for an unusual weakness," she said. "Let us both forget it. And don't you find this place hot? Let us get outside and walk."
They found a soft misty rain falling. The commissionaire called a hansom. She moved her skirts to make room for him.
"I am going down to Stepney to see a man who I think will be interested in my scheme," he said. "When may I come down again and have tea with you?"
"Any afternoon, if you will drop me a line the night before," she said, "but I am not very likely to be out, in any case. Thank you so much for my dinner. My aunt seemed to think that I was coming to London to starve. I think I feel fairly safe this evening, at any rate."