"Then why——"
"Didn't I tell you?"
"Yes—that is, you might have mentioned it. Of course, it really makes no difference—" He smiled, dismissing it as a triviality.
Gentle reader, I don't know whether your sympathies have secretly been with Guilford all the time or not—but I know that mine were distinctly with him at that moment. If there is ever a season when a woman's system is predisposed toward the malady known as sex love, it is when some man is magnanimous about another man. And Guilford's manner at that instant was magnanimous—and I already had fifty-seven other varieties of affection for him! I decided then, in the twinkling of my fan chain, which I was agitating rather mercilessly, that if Guilford were the kind of a man I could love, he'd be the very man I should adore.
—But he wasn't. And the kind I could love was disentangling himself from the group around the door and coming toward me at that very moment.
"Have you met him?" I asked of my companion, trying to pretend that the noise was my fan chain and not my heart.
"No."
In another instant they were shaking hands cordially.
"You'll excuse me a moment?" Guilford asked, turning to me—after he and Maitland Tait had propounded and answered perfunctory questions about Oldburgh. "I wanted to speak to—Delia Ramage."
I had never before in my life heard of his wishing to speak to Delia Ramage, but she was the nearest one to him, so he veered across to her side, while I was left alone with the new arrival. This is called heaping coals of fire.