"No, I didn't! Little donkeys! Hard lines on the actors. Even I get a few albums now and then, and it's a fearful nuisance. I put off writing in them and they lie about my study until they get quite a battered and dissipated look."
"And then?"
"Oh, I write in them. It would be impolite not to, you know. I have an invaluable formula. I write, 'Dear Madam, I am very sorry to say that I cannot accede to your kind request for an autograph. The practice is one with which I am not in sympathy. Yours very truly, Gilbert Lothian!'"
"That's splendid, Mr. Lothian, better than sending a telegram, as some one did the other day to an importunate girl. They were talking about it last night at the Amberleys' after you left. I suppose that's really what gave me courage to send 'Surgit Amari' by Mr. Dickson Ingworth. Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees said that they always write passages from their novels when they are asked."
"Perhaps that's a good plan," Lothian answered, listening to the "viols in her voice" and not much interested in the minor advertising arts of the Toftrees. What rare maiden was this with whom he was chatting? What had made him come to see her after all?—a mere whim doubtless—but was he not about to reap a very delightful harvest?
For he was conscious of immense pleasure as he stood there talking to her, and there was excitement mingled with the pleasure. It was as though he was advancing upon a landscape, and at every step something fresh and interesting came into view.
"I did so dislike Mr. Toftrees and his wife," Rita said with a mischievous little gleam in her eyes.
"Did you?" he asked in surprise. "They seemed very pleasant people I thought."
"I expect that was because you thought nothing whatever about them, Mr. Lothian," she replied.
He realised the absolute truth of the remark in a flash. The novelists had in no way interested him. He had not thought about these people at all—this maiden was a psychologist then! There was something subtly flattering in what she had said. His point of view had interested the girl, she had discovered it, small and unimportant though it was.