"Perhaps. It is the same at the châteaux. Everyone wants his best girl to watch his prowess with the gun."
He stopped, wishing he had left the best girl out of it; but Joan was kind hearted and did not hesitate an instant.
"So you are what is known as a gentleman of leisure and independent means?" she said suavely.
"Something of the sort."
"I am sorry for you, Mr. Delgrado."
"I am rather sorry for myself at times," he admitted, and if Joan had chanced to glance at him she would have seen a somewhat peculiar expression on his face. "But why do you call me Mr. Delgrado?"
She gazed at him now in blank bewilderment—just a second too late to see that expression. "Isn't Delgrado your name?" she asked.
"Yes, in a sense. People mostly call me Alec. Correctly speaking, Alec isn't mother's darling for Alexis; but it goes, anyhow."
"Sometimes I think you are an American," she vowed.
"Half," he said. "My mother is an American, my father a Kosnovian—well, just a Kosnovian."