"Less would have put things upon a sounder basis." He shook his head gloomily.
"A sounder basis? I don't know what you mean, I don't understand those business phrases," cried his aunt, with very natural vexation; "what in the world has 'a sounder basis' to do with Leonore Stubbs?"
"I'll tell you;" he roused himself, "I go about the world a good deal, and I know girls—a little. I know this, that it isn't usual for them to make the running so freely on their own account when they are—are—in earnest. When they are in search of scalps, it's different."
"Scalps? Oh, I see; I know. But surely Leonore——"
"She went for me—yes; but she was as cool as a cucumber. Do you know, once or twice to-day I felt not exactly nervous, but that way—but she? Not a bit of her. She was all froth and foam,——"
"You are quite poetic, but you don't explain the 'sounder basis'?"
"Hang it all, aunt, I can't think that girl means anything."
"And yet when you came in just now, you told me she was so delightful and responsive."
"I said 'delightful'—I didn't say responsive'. The truth was, it was I who had to be responsive. She made the advances—if they could be called advances. And that isn't what I call having things upon a sound basis."
With which piece of wisdom the two separated, for though Lady Butts told herself that her protégé was simply suffering from reaction, and that the reaction would pass, she felt that no more was to be gained by pursuing the subject at present.