"My dearest Cecil, whatever possessed you to bow to that man!" cried Lady Marabout, in direst distress.
"Is it not customary to bow to one's acquaintances—I thought it was?" asked Lady Cecil, with demure mischief.
"But, my dear, from a window!—and when Mason is saying we are not at home!"
"That isn't Mason's fib, or Mason's fault, Lady Marabout!" suggested Cecil, with wicked emphasis.
"There is no falsehood or fault at all anywhere—everybody knows well enough what 'not at home' means," returned Lady Marabout, almost pettishly.
"Oh yes," laughed the young lady, saucily. "It means 'I am at home and sitting in my drawing room, but I shall not rise to receive you, because you are not worth the trouble.' It's a polite cut direct, and a honeyed rudeness—a bitter almond wrapped up in a sugar dragée, like a good many other bonbons handed about in society."
"My dear Cecil, you have some very strange ideas; you will get called satirical if you don't take care," said Lady Marabout, nervously.
Cecil Ormsby's tone worried her, and made her feel something as she felt when she had a restive, half-broken pair of horses in her carriage, for the direction of whose next plunge or next kick nobody could answer.
"And if I be—what then?"
"My dear child, you could not anyhow get a more disadvantageous reputation! It may amuse gentlemen though it frightens half them; but it offends all women irremediably. You see, there are so few whom it doesn't hit somewhere," returned Lady Marabout, quite innocent of the neat satire of her own last sentence.