"Oh," she laughed, "papa monopolizes everybody and everything else, but I monopolize him. But you look serious, Lord Brompton, and less complacent, if I may use the expression, than when we met last. Dear old Paris. That was two years ago."
"Ought I to look complacent after reading in the newspaper that my old schoolmate, Cedric Ruskin, has been arrested on a charge of high treason?"
"Alas! poor Cedric!—no, that was Yorick. Down, Bayard, down," she cried to her dog.
"A great many things may happen in two years, Miss Windsor. When chance first brought us together, I was a landed proprietor, and the heir of a noble lineage. To-day I am a beggar at the feet of fatherless wealth."
"Excuse me, Lord Brompton, I have a father."
"Did I say I was at your feet, Miss Windsor?"
"You are the same clever creature as ever," she answered. "But I am beginning to believe you are in earnest. Is it possible that you are the Lord Brompton who told me once that fate's quiver held no shaft to terrify a philosopher? 'Dust to dust, and what matters it whether king or chaos rule?' Those were your words. I warned you then, but you laughed me to scorn—"
"And now you are deriding me."
"You are unjust. I met you with a proffer of hospitality, but you would none of it."
"Am I not to dine with you this evening?"