"Cyril! I have been here more than a month. Surely a girl can make an acquaintance in that time?"
"It depends, I fancy, on the girl, and on the circumstances in which she is placed. What is Mr. Lawrence?"
"I have not the faintest notion. I have a sort of general idea that, like yourself, he is something in the City. It seems to me that nowadays most men are."
"Who introduced him?"
"A shower of rain."
"An excellent guarantor of the man's eligibility, though, even for the average girl, one would scarcely have supposed that that would have been a sufficient introduction."
Miss Strong flushed.
"You have no right to talk to me like that. I did not know that you were coming to Brighton, or I would have met you at the station."
"I knew that I should meet you on the pier."
The lady stood still.