“What is it?” she asked. “Everybody speaks frankly to me: they don’t treat me as they do other girls, you know.”
“It’s a dangerous experiment talking frankly to a girl,” said he. “But if it comes to that, it’s not so dangerous an experiment as a girl talking frankly to a man—leading him to do things that he hasn’t a mind to do—may be that he hates doing.”
“I was born in an atmosphere of experiments,” said she. “I delight in having dealings with new forces, and making out their respective coefficients of energy.”
“Oh; then you don’t happen to think that these chaps who were here just now are in love with you? That’s frank enough, isn’t it?”
Her face had become roseate, but she was not angry. Whatever she may have been she was sufficiently like other girls to be able to refrain from getting angry at the suggestion that four young men were in love with her at the same time.
“It’s nonsense enough,” she said. “You have quite misunderstood the situation, Lord Lullworth. I like Guy Overton and all the others greatly, and I hope they like me. But they are no more in love with me than I am in love with them.”
“Do you fancy that a chap allows himself to be led about by a girl all for the fun of the thing?” he asked.
“Why should a man think it ridiculous for a woman to be his friend and to give him the advice of a friend—the advice that he would welcome if it were to come from a brother?” she enquired.
“I don’t know why, but I know that he does,” said Lord Lullworth. “Anyhow, you don’t think of any of the chaps who were here as a lover?”
“I do not,” she cried emphatically—almost eagerly.