Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.
“And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?”
“Well, you sounded supremely detached,” she grumbled.
“I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska’s dancing the loveliest thing I have ever seen,” he returned simply.
The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.
“Thank you,” she answered. “I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to enjoy being told I’d a pretty dimple when I was a girl.”
“You have now,” rejoined Quarrington audaciously.
Lady Arabella’s eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.
“Thank you again. But it’s a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an old woman of seventy.”
“I don’t,” retorted the artist gravely. “I reserve them for the young people I know of that age.”