"I am bearing up," Crawshay rejoined, "because I am hoping that with kindness and consideration, and with opportunity to prove to you what a domestic and faithful person I am, you will perceive that of the two men I am the more worthy."
"Think something of yourself, don't you?" she observed.
"I have cultivated this confidence," he told her. "In my younger days I was over-diffident."
"Guess you're older than I thought you, then."
"I am thirty-seven years old," he declared, "and I was well brought up."
"Jocelyn Thew," she said reflectively, "is forty."
"I did not bring you here," he declared, "to discuss the age of my unworthy rival. I brought you to tell me whether you consider that this Lobster Americaine reminds you at all of Delmonico's, and to prove to you that we can, if we put our minds to it and speak plain and simple words to the sommelier, serve our champagne as iced even as you like it."
Nora was not wanting in appreciation.
"It's the best thing I've had to eat since I left New York, and for some time before that," she assured him. "There hasn't been much Delmonico's for me during the last few months. Too many of your lot poking about Fourteenth Street."
He nodded.