"If I give your giraffe friend those flowers, I suppose you expect me to tell lies as well?" she asked, with some approach to good-humor.
"About what?"
"Oh, about being delighted to make her acquaintance, and that kind of thing."
"I have no doubt you will be as pleased to make her acquaintance as she will be to make yours," said he, "and a few civil words never do any harm."
Here Miss Burgoyne was called. She went to the little side-table and sipped some of her home-brewed lemonade; then he opened the door for her, and together they went up into the wings.
"Tall, is she?" continued Miss Burgoyne, as they were looking on at Mr. Fred Collier's buffooneries out there on the stage. "Is she as silent and stupid as her brother?"
"Her brother?"
"Lord Rockminster."
"Oh, Lord Rockminster isn't her brother. You've got them mixed up," said Lionel. "Miss Cunyngham's brother, Sir Hugh, married a sister of Lord Rockminster—the Lady Adela Cunyngham who came to your room one night—don't you remember?"
"You seem to have the whole peerage and baronetage at your fingers' ends," said she, sullenly; and the next moment she was on the stage, smiling and gracious, and receiving her father's guests with that charming manner which the heroine of the operetta could assume when she chose.