The girl was laughing as she returned Lanyard's telegram and received her own.
"'Mature charms'!" she pouted. "'Enjoyable intellectual evening'! Oh, how depressing! Poor Paul! but you must have felt discouraged."
"I did--at first."
"And afterwards--?"
"Disappointed."
"And are you going to obey that injunction to treat me as somebody's sister?"
"Never in my life!"
"How then?"
"As anybody's wife." Perplexity knitted a little pucker in her delicately lined brows.
"Paul! you couldn't speak French so well and be an Englishman!"