"Then what were you doing there?"
"Eh!"
"What were you doing there?"
"I'm not a plaster saint," he replied.
"Who said you were?"
"And I'm interested in life: curious to see all sides of it. She's often asked me, but to-night, when she wired to say she'd a paragon coming to dinner, I went."
"She wired?"
"To-night. It all but missed me. I'm no end of glad it didn't."
"I suppose I ought to be glad too," remarked Mavis.
"I know you think me a bad egg, but I'm not; I'm not really," he went on, to add, after a moment's pause, "I believe at heart I'm a sentimentalist."