"Well, you need not have been, for he singled me out in order to talk about you. He thinks you are a nice child. You interest him."
"Defend me!" said Evadne. "But you mistake me, dear aunt. It was not of him I was jealous, but of you. The fat prince is nothing to me, and you are a very great deal."
Mrs. Orton Beg's face brightened at the words, but she continued to look into the fire silently for some seconds after Evadne had spoken, and made no other visible sign of having heard them.
"I don't think I ought to encourage you to sit up so late," she said presently. "Lady Adeline has just been asking me who it is that burns the midnight oil up here so regularly."
"Lady Adeline must be up very late herself to see it," said Evadne. "I suppose those precious twins disturb her. I wish she would let me take entire charge of them when she is here. It would be a relief, I should think!"
"It would be an imposition," said Mrs. Orton Beg. "But you are a brave girl, Evadne. I would not venture."
"Oh, they delight me," Evadne answered. "And I know them well enough now to forestall them."
"When I told Lady Adeline that these were your rooms," her aunt pursued, "she said something about a lily maid high in her chamber up a tower to the east guarding the sacred shield of Lancelot."
"Singularly inappropriate," said Evadne. "For my tower is south and west, thank Heaven."
"And there isn't a symptom of Lancelot," her aunt concluded.