Her rejoinder to this was to say in a moment: “You’ve a different tone since you’ve taken up the Princess.”
She spoke with a certain severity, but he broke out as if he hadn’t heard her: “I like your idea of the female aristocracy quarrelling over a dirty brute like me.”
“I don’t know how dirty you are, but I know you smell of soap,” said his sister inexorably. “They won’t quarrel; that’s not the way they do it. Yes, you’re taking a different tone for some purpose I can’t discover just yet.”
“What do you mean by that? When did I ever take a tone?” Paul demanded.
“Why then do you speak as if you weren’t remarkable, immensely remarkable—more remarkable than anything any one, male or female, good or bad, of the aristocracy or of the vulgar sort, can ever do for you?”
“What on earth have I ever done to show it?” he asked as with amusement.
“Oh I don’t know your secrets, and that’s one of them. But we’re out of the common beyond any one, you and I, and between ourselves, with the door fastened, we might as well admit it.”
“I admit it for you with all my heart!” the young man promptly laughed.
“Well then if I admit it for you that’s all that’s required.”
The pair considered themselves a while in silence, as if each were tasting agreeably the distinction the other conferred; then Muniment said: “If I’m such an awfully superior chap why shouldn’t I behave in keeping?”