“We know so little about your life, you see,” the girl softened it for him, with a direct and friendly smile, and then gazed watchfully at her chaperon.  She was a nice girl, Billy decided emphatically.

“How would you construct her family?” was the elder lady’s next demand.

“Oh, big people in a small town,” he hazarded carelessly.  “The kind of place where the life isn’t wide enough for the girl after all her ‘advantages’ and she goes abroad in search of adventure.”

“Adventure,” repeated Miss Falconer thoughtfully.  She seemed to have an idea, but Billy was certain it was not his idea.

He hastened to clarify the light he had tried to cast upon his upsetting little countrywoman.  “All life, you know, is an adventure to the American girl,” he generalized.  “She is a little bit more on her own than I imagine your girls are,” and for the fraction of a second his eyes wandered to the listening countenance of Lady Claire, “and that rather exhilarates her.  And she doesn’t want things cut and dried—­she wants them spontaneous and unexpected—­and people, just as people, interest her tremendously.  I think that’s why she’s so unintelligible on the Continent,” he added thoughtfully.  “They don’t understand there that girlish love of experience as experience—­enjoyment of romance apart from results.”

“Romance apart from results,” repeated Miss Falconer in a peculiar voice.

“I don’t believe you quite get me,” said Billy hastily.  He felt foolish and he felt resentful.  And if these English women couldn’t understand the bright, volatile stuff that Arlee was made of, he certainly was not going to talk about it.  But Miss Falconer had one more question for him.

“When you say big people in a small town do you mean her father would be a sort of country squire?”

“More probably a captain of industry,” Billy smiled.

“A captain—­Oh, that is one of your phrases!”

“One of our phrases,” he laughed, and then parried, “I thought you were acquainted with Miss Beecher?”

“Quite slightly,” said Miss Falconer in an aloof tone.  “My brother came over on the same ship with her—­he came to join us here.”

Billy experienced a flood of mental light.  The brother—­at the hotel he had discovered that his name was Robert Falconer—­was coming to join his elder sister and her young charge.  He had come on the same steamer as Miss Beecher.  Ergo, he was staying at the hotel where Miss Beecher was and not with his sister.  Billy comprehended the anxiety of the lady with the Roman nose.  He looked at Lady Claire with a certain sympathy.

He caught her own eyes reconnoitering, and they each looked hastily away.

Again Miss Falconer returned to her attack.  “Then you really know nothing positive of Miss Beecher’s family?”

“Nothing in the world,” said Billy cheerfully.  “But why not ask Miss Beecher?”

The lady made no reply.  “Miss Beecher is a beautiful girl,” said Lady Claire hastily.  “She’s so beautiful that I suppose we are all rather curious about her—­of course people will ask about a girl like that!”