“Lucy! Loo—cee! Where’s my pipe?”
Diana laughed.
“The same old voice!” she said. “That’s Mr. May, isn’t it? He’s calling you—and he doesn’t like being kept waiting, does he?”
Miss Preston’s face had suddenly flushed very red.
“I’ll tell Mrs. May,” she stammered, and hurriedly left the room.
Diana gazed about her on all the little familiar things she had so often dusted and arranged in their different places. They were all so vastly removed now in association that they might have been relics of the Stone Age so far as she was concerned. All at once the door opened and a reddish face peered in, adorned with a white terrier moustache—then a rather squat body followed the face and “Pa” stood revealed. With an affable, not to say engaging air, he said:
“I beg your pardon! Are you waiting to see anyone?”
Diana rose, and her exquisite beauty and elegance swept over his little sensual soul like a simoon.
“Yes!” she answered, sweetly, while he stared like a man hypnotised—“I want to see Mrs. May—and you!”
“Me!” he responded, eagerly—“I am only too charmed!”