Hilda leaned upon the banisters, her arms dropping over from the elbows. “I suppose I may look at her,” she said; and her smile glowed down upon him.
“Do you think it really rewards attention?—the type, I mean.”
“How you will talk of types! Didn't you see that she was unique? You may come back if you like, for a quarter of an hour, and we will discuss her.”
Lindsay looked at his watch. “I would come back for a quarter of an hour to discuss anything, or nothing,” he replied, “but there isn't time. I am dining with the Archdeacon. I must go to church.”
“Why not be original and dine with the Archdeacon without going to church? Why not say on arrival: 'My dear Archdeacon, your sermon and your mutton the same evening—c'est trop! I cannot so impose upon your generosity. I have come for the mutton!'”
Thus was Captain Laura Filbert superseded, as doubtless often before, by an orthodox consideration. Duff Lindsay drove away in his cart; and still, for an appreciable number of seconds, Miss Howe stood leaning over the banisters, her eyes fixed full of speculation on the place where he had stood. She was thinking of a scene—a dinner with an Archdeacon—and of the permanent satisfactions to be got from it; and she renounced almost with a palpable sigh the idea of the Archdeacon's asking her.
CHAPTER II
“Oh, her gift!” said Alicia Livingstone. “It is the lowest, isn't it—in the scale of human endowment? Mimicry.”
Miss Livingstone handed her brother his tea as she spoke, but turned her eyes and her delicate chin up to Duff Lindsay with the protest. Lindsay's cup was at his lips, and his eyebrows went up over it as if they would answer before his voice was set at liberty.