"If I can do it half so well, I shall be more than pleased," she answered, promptly.
"You accept it, then?"
"My dear Sir Edward!" she laughed. "We all have something of the mountebank in our natures. He plays it best, who plays it the most, and shows it the least."
"Fine philosophy!" he commented. "Such cynicism may be permissible in a man, but it is not, many times not, in a woman."
"The men seem to like it," she answered.
He shook his head. "They like you—they have not seen the cynicism."
"And if they do see it?"
He raised his eye-brows, expressively. "I do not know—perhaps, and perhaps not."
"With the chances?"
"Not, decidedly not!"