"If she doesn't care, I can't see how what you have told me would affect her one way or other." Tony took up his pipe again and stared steadily into the fire.
Ballinger stared at him. How much did he know? Had Lallie written about it to him? She probably would, and that's why he said that about not taking the conventional view. He didn't make it very easy for a fellow. Ballinger cleared his throat.
"May I," he asked, "depend upon you to put my case as favourably as possible before Miss Clonmell?"
"I can't promise that. You see, to be perfectly candid, I know next to nothing about you, except that you are well off and that Fitz Clonmell likes you; but I will certainly point out to Miss Clonmell that it would be a pity to let an affair of that sort--you said it was entirely ended, I think; had been for some time--stand in the way where there was any solid prospect of happiness. I can't truly say I'm glad you told me of this, for I'm not. It puts a horrid lot of responsibility on me, and an old bachelor is hardly the adviser one would choose for a girl in affairs of this kind."
* * * * *
"I'll put the common-sense view before Lallie, as I promised," Tony wrote to Fitz Clonmell that night; "but your Sidney Bargrave Ballinger is too much of a 'Tomlinson' for my taste."
CHAPTER XXII
"My heart, my heart is like a singing bird,
Whose nest is in a watered shoot,"
sang Lallie, and Tony Bevan had set his study door open to listen.
There was no doubt whatever that Lallie was supremely glad to be back at B. House. Even Miss Foster had, at dinner that night, thawed into a semblance of geniality; the girl's pleasure was so manifest, her high spirits so infectious.