“Miss Virginia?—hardly. She is a Carteret of the Carterets; Virginia-born-bred-and-named. Stunning girl, isn't she?”
“No,” said Winton shortly, resenting the slang for no reason that he could have set forth in words.
Adams lighted another of the scented villainies, and his clean-shaven face wrinkled itself in a slow smile.
“Which means that she has winged you at sight, I suppose, as she does most men.” Then he added calmly, “It's no go.”
“What is 'no go'?”
Adams laughed unfeelingly, and puffed away at his cigarette.
“You remind me of the fable about the head-hiding ostrich. Didn't I see you staring at her as if you were about to have a fit? But it is just as I tell you: it's no go. She isn't the marrying kind. If you knew her, she'd be nice to you till she got a good chance to flay you alive—”
“Break it off!” growled Winton.
“Presently. As I was saying, she would miss the chance of marrying the best man in the world for the sake of taking a rise out of him. Moreover, she comes of old Cavalier stock with an English earldom at the back of it, and she is inordinately proud of the fact; while you—er—you've given me to understand that you are a man of the people, haven't you?”
Winton nodded absently. It was one of his minor fads to ignore his lineage, which ran decently back to a Colonial governor on his father's side, and to assert that he did not know his grandfather's middle name—which was accounted for by the very simple fact that the elder Winton had no middle name.