“I have no friends,” says Tita carelessly.

“You have your uncle, at all events; he might like——­”

“Oh, don’t be an ass,” says Lady Rylton.

She delivers this excellent advice with a promptitude and vigour that does her honour.  Rylton stares at her for a moment, and then gives way to amusement.

“I shan’t be if I can help it,” says he; “but there are often so many difficulties in the way.”  He hesitates as if uncertain, and then goes on.  “By the way, Tita, you shouldn’t give yourself the habit of saying things like that.”

“Like what?”

“Well, telling a fellow not to be an ass, you know.  It doesn’t matter to me, of course, but I heard you say something like that to old Lady Warbeck yesterday, and she seemed quite startled.”

“Did she?  Do her good!” says Tita, making a charming little face at him.  “Nothing like electricity nowadays.  It’ll quite set her up again.  Add years to her life.”

“Still, she wouldn’t like it, perhaps.”

“Having years added to her life?”

“No; your slang.”

“She likes me, any way,” says Tita nonchalantly, “so it doesn’t matter about the slang.  The last word she mumbled at me through her old false teeth was that she hoped I’d come over and see her every Tuesday that I had at my command (I’m not going to have many), because I reminded her of some granddaughter who was now in heaven, or at the Antipodes—­it’s all the same.”

She pauses to catch a fly—­dexterously, and with amazing swiftness, in the palm of her hand—­that has been buzzing aimlessly against the window-pane.  Having looked at it between her fingers, she flings it into the warm air outside.

“So you see,” continues she triumphantly, “it’s a good thing to startle people.  They fall in love with you at once.”

Here, as if some gay little thought has occurred to her, she lowers her head and looks at her dainty finger-nails, then up at Rylton from under half-closed lids.

“What a good thing I didn’t try to startle you!" says she. "You might have fallen in love with me, too.”

She waits for a second as it were, just time enough to let her see the nervous movement of his brows, and then—­she laughs.

“I’ve escaped that bore,” says she, nodding her head.  She throws herself into a big chair.  “And now, as the parsons say, ’to continue’; you were advising me to ask——­”

“Your uncle.”

All the brightness has died out of Rylton’s voice; he looks dull, uninterested.  That small remark of hers—­what memories it has awakened!  And yet—­would he go back?

“Chut!  What a suggestion!” says Tita, shrugging her shoulders.  “Don’t you know that my one thought is to enjoy myself?”

“A great one,” says he, smiling strangely.