"I did not say they had said so to me," she answered sweetly. "Don't go and be absurdly jealous without any cause whatever. If any one has a right to be jealous, it is I, considering the way you have been going on with Louie Drexel. But of course if there's nothing in it, that's all well and done with; and I am of a forgiving disposition, when I'm taken the right way. Now about Vin: can you see anybody who would do better for him than Louie Drexel?"
Be sure it was not of Vin Harris, much as he was interested in him, that Lord Musselburgh wished to talk at this moment; but, on the other hand, in the first flush of his pride and gratitude, any whim of hers was law to him; and perhaps it was a sufficient and novel gratification to be able to call her Madge.
"I'm afraid," said he, "that Vin is not the kind of person to have his life arranged for him by other people. And besides you must remember, Madge, dear, that you are assuming a great deal. You are assuming that you can show Vin that this old man is an impostor——"
"Oh, can there be any doubt of it!" she exclaimed. "Isn't the story you have told me yourself enough?"
Lord Musselburgh looked rather uncomfortable; he was a good-natured kind of person, and liked to think the best of everybody.
"I had no right to tell you that story," said he.
"But now I have the right to know about that and everything else, haven't I—Hubert?" said she, with a pretty coyness.
"And besides," he continued, "Vin has a perfect explanation of the whole affair. There is no doubt the old man was just full of this subject, and believed he could write about it better than anyone else, even supposing the idea had occurred to some other person; he was anxious above all things that his poetical countrymen over there in the States and Canada should be done justice to; and when he heard that the volume was actually published he immediately declared that he would do everything in his power to help it——"
"But what about the £50—Hubert?"
"Oh, well," her companion said, rather uneasily, "I have told you that that was a gift from me to him. I did not stipulate for the publication of any book."