"She is not," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly, "and she never will be. If you go about it right she will marry you." She added calmly: "I hope she will, with all my heart."
"Marry me! Lois Huntington! Why--"
"She considers me her grandmother, perhaps; but not you her grandfather. She thinks you are much too young for me. She thinks you are the most wonderful and the best and most charming man in the world."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"I do not know where she got such an idea--unless you told her so yourself," she said, with a smile.
"I would like her to think it," said Keith, smiling; "but I have studiously avoided divulging myself in my real and fatal character."
"Then she must have got it from the only other person who knows you in your true character."
"And that is--?"
She looked into his eyes with so amused and so friendly a light in her own that Keith lifted her hand to his lips.
"I do not deserve such friendship."