“I am sure you, sir, are certainly not impressionable.”
“Not a bit,” he said cheerfully. “But I am perfectly ready to pay you any number of compliments, if that is what you wish.”
She bit her lip, saying, after a moment, with a suggestion of pique in her voice: “I don’t wish it at all.”
“In that cast,” said Ravenscar, “I feel that we shall deal extremely together. Do you play piquet?”
“Certainly.”
“Ah, but I mean do you play well enough to engage in a rubber with me?”
Miss Grantham eyed him with considerable hostility. “I am thought,” she said coldly, “to have a reasonably good understanding.”
“So have many others I could name, but that does not make them good card-players.”
Miss Grantham sat very straight in her chair. Her magnificent eyes flashed. “My skill at cards, Mr Ravenscar, has never yet been called in question!”
“But you have not played with me yet,” he pointed out.