“That is very encouraging,” said the Earl. “Do you know, I was presumptuous enough to think that you were quite glad to see me when I came in?”
She hesitated, and then said with a rueful smile: “Well, perhaps I was a little glad. I have been feeling rather strange amongst a set of company I don’t know. That lady—Miss Crewe, I think you call her—has been trying for the past twenty minutes to show me what a countrified nobody I am, and that, you know, when one knows it to be the melancholy truth, makes one feel sadly out of place.”
“You will have your revenge upon her if you mean to hunt to-morrow,” remarked the Earl. “She has the worst hands imaginable, and is generally off at the first fence.”
She laughed. “Yes, I do mean to hunt, but I hope I am not ill-natured enough to wish Miss Crewe a tumble. Shall you hunt also?”
“Certainly; to keep an eye on my ward.”
She put up her chin, a quizzical gleam in her eye. “I will give you a lead,” she promised.
He was amused. “Come, we begin to understand one another tolerably well,” he said. “How do you like your snuff?”
“To tell you the truth I don’t often take it,” confided Judith. “I only pretend.”
“You are in excellent company then, for you follow the Prince Regent. Let me see you take a pinch.”
She obeyed him, extracting from her reticule a gold box with enamelled plaques on the lid and sides.