"Oh, quite, thanks. Only I don't know that I shall undertake the commission after all; it's such a big thing."
"Millie!" Brenda almost gasped, for this speech was wholly out of character with the habitual utterances of Miss Lutwyche, among whose failings diffidence could not be reckoned.
"Well, you'll never get on," said Theo earnestly. "Hitch your waggon to a star, my dear. You might live to be fifty, and never get such another chance."
"That's very true," said Melicent, with curious emphasis.
Then she remembered Mayne's presence, and could have bitten out her tongue.
"What do you think of Brooke, eh, Miss Lutwyche?" asked Lance, eager to have his friend approved.
"Well, I thought him rather—what shall I say—capricious, unstable," she said, and was met with a simultaneous protest from both men.
"You couldn't say that of Brooke!"
"Oh, you both know him, of course, and I don't," said she composedly. "But I thought him a little undecided. Seemed quite ready, at a moment's whim, to throw up his idea of building in Wiltshire, and try another county, after he had bought the land."
"If he is like that, it would be better not to undertake his work, I should think," said Brenda, in tones of disappointment.