"Classification?"
"Ye-es—yes."
"How far have you got now?"
Louie's mood was on her. It was overdue, but it had come now, and she was challenging Earle. Nevertheless, she was ignorant of what she really challenged when she challenged Earle. Hard knowledge of the true weight of Life will tell, and Earle's knowledge of that weight told now. The girl's head was downhung, so that the nodule of bone at the back of her neck caught the light sharply. Suddenly she looked up.
"But you are Lord Moone's niece, aren't you?" she said, without preface.
Since her vacation, this daughter of a struggling Westbourne Grove bookseller had seemed less assertive than before, and was, somehow, none the worse for it. Louie didn't know what had made the difference, but she momentarily dropped her point.
"Yes," she said. "Why?"
"Then——?" Richenda halted.
"Then what? The other that I told them downstairs is just as true, if that's what you want to know."
"But—but——"