He had lain there for about half an hour when a gay little laugh aroused him.
“You idyllic creature!”
It was Connie Deering, bewitchingly apparelled, a dainty, smiling pale yellow butterfly, holding as usual an absurd parasol over her head.
“I have been looking for you all over the place,” she remarked. “They told me you were somewhere about the grounds. May I sit down?”
He made room for her on the rug, and taking the parasol from her hand, closed it. She settled herself gracefully by his side.
“I repeat I have been looking for you,” she said.
“The overpowering sense of honour done me has deprived me of speech,” replied Jimmie, with an attempted return to his light-hearted manner.
“Norma is entertaining those dreadful Spencer-Temples,” said Mrs. Deering, irrelevantly.
“I must have had a premonition of their terrors, for I fled from before their path,” he said. “After all, poor people, what have they done to be called names?” he added.
“They are ugly.”