“He is not in the least forward,” Beatrice Talchester said, the time arriving when she and her sisters occasionally talked him over with their special friends, the Granthams, “and he is not forever under one’s feet, as the pushing sort usually is.”
“But he never declines an invitation. There is no doubt that he wants to see people,” said Lady Honora, with the pretty little nose and the dimples. She had ceased to turn up the pretty little nose, and she showed a dimple as she added: “Gwynedd is tremendously taken with him. She is teaching him to play croquet. They spend hours together.”
“He’s beginning to play a pretty good game,” said Gwynedd. “He’s not stupid, at all events.”
“I don’t understand him, or I don’t understand Captain Palliser’s story,” Amabel Grantham argued. “Lucy and I are quite out of the running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as he does of any of you.”
“He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles, but looks. He asked how many of us were ‘lookers.’ Don’t be modest, Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably suggested.
“There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward somewhat thoughtfully. “Captain Palliser insists that he is much shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all over before he commits himself.”
“He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness. “He’s rather good-looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering grin I ever saw, and he’s as ‘rich as grease is,’ as I heard a housemaid say one day. I’m getting quite resigned to his voice, or it is improving, I don’t know which.
“But,” added Lady Gwynedd, “he is not going to commit himself to any of us, incredible as it may seem. The one person he stares at sometimes is Joan Fayre, and he only looks at her as if he were curious and wouldn’t object to finding out why she treats him so outrageously. He isn’t annoyed; he’s only curious.”
“He’s a likable thing,” said Amabel Grantham. “He’s even rather a dear. I’ve begun to like him myself.”