“Does it make any difference to you?” he repeated.
Helen was on the point of answering him very kindly when Count de Lestis leaned over and engaged her attention.
“Miss Helen, do not forget the promise you made me to come to Weston some morning with your father. There are many things I want to show you. I want your advice, too, about some pantry arrangements I am contemplating. What does mere man know of pantry shelves?”
“Oh, I’d love to come!” exclaimed Helen, and the kind answer she was preparing to give Dr. Wright never was spoken.
That young physician looked at the Hungarian count as though he would cheerfully throttle him. Helen’s advice about pantry shelves, indeed! What business had this foreigner to draw Helen into his household arrangements?
During that luncheon de Lestis managed to antagonize both Lewis Somerville and George Wright. Douglas had smiled entirely too many times on this stranger to suit Lewis, and Helen had been much too eager to pass on the housekeeping arrangements to accord with George’s ideas of United States’ relations with Hungary.
“Why is he not fighting with his country?” each young man asked himself.
Chloe was waiting on the table remarkably well, much to Helen’s gratification. Only once had she fallen down the steps, and, thanks to her teacher’s vigilance, she usually remembered to pass things to the left.
“You must try to show the Count de Lestis how much you have learned,” Helen had told her while she was preparing the lunch; “remember how interested he is in educating colored people.”
Helen, seated at the head of the table, was pouring the tea, Mrs. Carter having resigned her place to her daughter when she resigned herself to be a semi-invalid.