"Meaning the future Countess of Glenmore, mayhap?" I suggested.
"I'm not meaning any such thing, and it's perhaps not becoming for me to explain what I do mean; but whether I say it of myself or 'tis said of me in the Glasgow Sentinel, it makes little differ, for I have the verse-making, and 'tis more to me than lands or titles.
"Aye," she said, after a pause, with a laugh as though making fun of her conceit of herself, "I have the genius——"
At the end of the meal, before she left us, bewildered by her vivacity and charm, she stopped at the door.
"Am I nice?" she asked.
"Very," said Danvers and I.
"And will ye give me," she asked, as a child might have done, "the thousand pounds for Father Michel?"
"I will not," I answered, the yielding in me showing through the words.
Danvers saw his chance and took it with the spur.
"I will," he said, going toward her to open the door, but it looked more as though he meant to take her in his arms, "I will, Nancy."