“Exactly. Now you are getting at the resemblance.”
“But you haven’t yet told me why she hates you and me.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not very clear,” he answered, “and anyhow it would be too tedious to try and explain. It’s a trifle enough anyway. Hullo!” breaking off, “isn’t that your baa-lamb I hear?”
Gwen listened with her head on one side.
“Yes, that’s his bleat,” she said. “Mamma will lead him in by a blue ribbon, so to speak, in a minute, and I shall want desperately to recite:
“‘Mummie had a woolly lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
But ’twas everywhere that Gwennie went
That lamb would always go.’”
She jumped up and commenced patting her hair into place and straightening the lace of her dress, remarking that, after all said and done, there was no harm in captivating. A moment later her mother came in looking worried.
“My dear,” she said, “Earl Selloyd wishes to speak to you alone. He is in the library.”
“Good Heaven!” exclaimed Gwen. “Has it come to this!”
“It’s very wrong to speak of it in that way,” said her mother reprovingly. “I’m sure I don’t know where the girls of the present day get their queer manners from. Do try and realise that Earl Selloyd has come here this afternoon to pay you the greatest honour it is in the power of any man to pay to any woman.”