“A Pontycroft, as much as you will,” concurred her brother suavely, “but you're only the wife of an Irish baronet, dear girl. No, it's something subtle, unseizable. Every word, look, gesture, hailed you as her friend and equal, and all of them together delicately kept you reminded that she was deigning hugely to honour a nobody. It's sheer odylic force.”
“She ate like five,” Lucilla went spitefully on. “She was helped twice to everything. And she emptied at least a whole bottle of wine.”
“Ah, well, as for that,” Ponty said, “a healthy appetite is a sign that its owner is human at the red-ripe of the heart. You didn't, by the by, do so badly yourself.”
“And she consumed her food with an air,” Lucilla persisted, “with a kind of devotional absorption, as if feeding herself was a religious sacrifice.”
“And I suppose you noticed also that she called Ruth 'my dear'?” Ponty asked.
“Yes, as if she was a dairymaid,” sniffed Lucilla. “I wonder you didn't turn and rend her.”
“Oh, I liked her,” Ruth replied. “You see, we mere Americans are so inured to being treated with affability and put at our ease by our English cousins that we scarcely notice such things in foreigners.”
“Well, it's lucky you like her,” said Ponty, wagging his head, “for you're in a fair way to see a good bit of her, if events move as they're moving. The crucial question, of course, is whether she liked you. If she did, I should call the deal as good as done.”
The “deal” seemed, at any rate, to advance a measurable step when, on the following afternoon, the Duchess called at the villa, for the purpose, as Pontycroft afterwards put it to Ruth, of “taking up your character.”
“Dearest Lady Dor,” she said, beaming upon every one, and I wish I could render the almost cooing loving-kindness of her intonation, “you will forgive me if I come like this à l'improviste? Yes? I was so anxious to see you again, and when people are mutually sympathetic, it is a pity to let time or etiquette delay the progress of their friendship, don't you think? Oh, kind Mr. Pontycroft,” she purred, as Ponty handed her a cup of tea. “Dear little Miss Adgate,” as Ruth passed the bread and butter.