Aldous laughed.

“My dear Miss Betty, haven’t you found out by now that I am a good listener and a bad talker?  I don’t talk of myself or”—­he hesitated—­“the things that have mattered most to me—­because, in the first place, it doesn’t come easy to me—­and, in the next, I can’t, you see, discuss my own concerns without discussing other people’s.”

“Oh, good gracious!” said Betty, “what you must have been thinking about me!  I declare I’ll never tell you anything again!”—­and, beating her tiny foot upon the ground, she sat, scarlet, looking down at it.

Aldous made all the smiling excuses he could muster.  He had found Betty a most beguiling and attaching little companion, both at the Court in the Easter recess, and during the Italian journey.  Her total lack of reserve, or what appeared so, had been first an amazement to him, and then a positive pleasure and entertainment.  To make a friend of him—­difficult and scrupulous as he was, and now more than ever—­a woman must be at the cost of most of the advances.  But, after the first evening with him, Betty had made them in profusion, without the smallest demur, though perfectly well aware of her mother’s ambitions.  There was a tie of cousinship between them, and a considerable difference of age.  Betty had decided at once that a mother was a dear old goose, and that great friends she and Aldous Raeburn should be—­and, in a sense, great friends they were.

Aldous was still propitiating her, when Lady Winterbourne came into the tea-room, followed by Marcella.  The elder lady threw a hurried and not very happy glance at the pair in the corner.  Marcella appeared to be in animated talk with a young journalist whom Raeburn knew, and did not look their way.

“Just one thing!” said Betty, bending forward and speaking eagerly in Aldous’s ear.  “It was all a mistake—­wasn’t it?  Now I know her I feel sure it was.  You don’t—­you don’t—­really think badly of her?”

Aldous heard her unwillingly.  He was looking away from her towards the buffet, when she saw a change in the eyes—­a tightening of the lip—­a something keen and hostile in the whole face.

“Perhaps Miss Boyce will be less of a riddle to all of us before long!” he said hastily, as though the words escaped him.  “Shall we get out of this very uncomfortable corner?”

Betty looked where he had looked, and saw a young man greeting Marcella with a manner so emphatic and intimate, that the journalist had instantly moved out of his way.  The young man had a noticeable pile of fair curls above a very white and rounded forehead.

“Who is that talking to Miss Boyce?” she asked of Aldous; “I have seen him, but I can’t remember the name.”

“That is Mr. Wharton, the member for one of our divisions,” said Aldous, as he rose from his chair.

Betty gave a little start, and her brow puckered into a frown.  As she too rose, she said resentfully to Aldous: