“Nonsense, Kate. If I thought for a moment you were really in earnest, I should say you underestimate your own attractions.”
“Oh, that’s all very well, Miss Dorothy Dimple; you are trying to draw a red herring across the trail, because you know that what I want to hear is why Lieutenant Drummond was so anxious to get me somewhere else. What use did he make of the opportunity the good-natured Prince and my sweet complacency afforded him?”
“He said nothing which might not have been overheard by any one.”
“Come down to particulars, Dorothy, and let me judge. You are so inexperienced, you know, that it is well to take counsel with a more sophisticated friend.”
“I don’t just remember—”
“No, I thought you wouldn’t. Did he talk of himself or of you?”
“Of himself, of course. He told me why he was going to Russia, and spoke of some checks he had met in his profession.”
“Ah! Did he cash them?”
“Obstacles—difficulties that were in his way, which he hoped to overcome.”
“Oh, I see. And did you extend that sympathy which—”