"Why, indeed!" answered the other. "She looked as black as thunder, and absolutely scowled at me. You should have put her in the carriage, I must say."
"He couldn't!" interrupted Picard; "because I did; and two people can't perform that office unless they make a queen's cushion."
"Oh, indeed!" said Miss Kate. "I suppose you think you'd do quite as well as Sir Henry. Not a bit of you. He's A 1 with the ladies. Haven't you found that out in all your travels? Why the young woman looked as if she'd eat poor me, when I only bowed to him! I mean the pale girl in a——Gracious! Captain Vanguard, if you like me tell me so, or, at least, if you kick me under the table—don't kick so precious hard!"
"That was my daughter, Miss Kate," said Sir Henry, in perfect good-humour, interpreting very correctly Frank's too strenuous warning below the surface.
Kate got out of her difficulty gracefully enough.
"Your daughter!" she repeated. "And a very nice daughter too. How fond she must be of you! I should, I know!"
Here Miss Cremorne exchanged glances with Vanguard, and Sir Henry felt a vague uncomfortable consciousness that the society was too young for him; relieved, however, by virtuous disapproval of Frank's promiscuous intimacies, and a dawning conviction that, if there had ever been any tendency to such an arrangement, he was well out of him for a son-in-law.
The sculptor now produced a velvet case of cigarettes which was handed round, and from which even the ladies did not disdain to take a few whiffs of the most fragrant tobacco in the world: Kilgarron only asking leave to indulge in a long strong Havanna, or "roofer," as he called it,—urging that to offer a man a cigarette when he wanted a cigar, was like giving him a slice of bread and butter when he asked for a beefsteak!
"Nonsense!" argued Mrs. Battersea. "Half a loaf is better than no bread, and half a frolic than no fun,—consequently, half a puff is better than no smoke. What do you say, Kate! That's your second cigarette already."
The girl would have made a pretty picture, leaning back on the red velvet cushion of a sofa to which she had now betaken herself, while daintily holding the cigarette between her delicate fingers, she pursed up the rosiest and most provoking mouth imaginable to emit a long thin stream of aromatic smoke.