’I think that I shall have to ask for an introduction to the Portuguese nun,’ said Courthope; ’the others, I am happy to say, I have met before.’

A smile of approval leapt straight out of her dark eyes into his, as if she would have said:  ’Good boy! you have read quite the right sort of books!’

Eliz was not endowed with the same well-balanced sense of proportion; for the time the imaginary was the real.

‘The only question that remains to be decided,’ she cried, ’is what you would prefer to be.  We will let you choose—­Bingley, or Darcy, or——­’

‘It would be fair to tell him,’ said the other, her smile broadening now, ’that it’s only the elderly people and notables who have been invited to dinner, the young folks are coming in after; so if you are hungry——­’ Her soft voice paused, as if suspended in mid-air, allowing him to draw the inference.

‘It depends entirely on who you are, who I would like to be.’  He did not realise that there was undue gallantry in his speech; he felt exactly like another child playing, loyally determined to be her mate, whatever the character that might entail.  ’I will even be the idiotic Edward if you are Eleanor Dashwood.’

Her chin was raised just half-an-inch higher; the smile that had been peeping from eyes and dimples seemed to retire for the moment.

‘Oh, we,’ she said, ’are the hostesses.  My sister is Eliz King and I am Madge King, and I think you had better be a real person too; just a Mr. Courthope, come in by accident.’

‘Well, then, he can help us in the receiving and chatting to them.’  Eliz was quite reconciled.

He felt glad to realise that his mistake had been merely playful.  ’In that case, may I have dinner without growing grey?’ He asked it of Madge, and her smile came back, so readily did she forget what she had hardly consciously perceived.

When the sharp-voiced little Eliz had been wheeled into the dining-room to superintend some preparations there before the meal was ready, Courthope could again break through the spell that the imaginary reception imposed.  He came from his dressing-room to find Madge at the housewifely act of replenishing the fire.  Filled with curiosity, unwilling to ask questions, he remarked that he feared she must often feel lonely, that he supposed Mrs. King did not often make visits unaccompanied by her daughters.

‘She does not, worse luck!’ Madge on her knees replied with childish audacity.

‘I hope when she returns she may not be offended by my intrusion.’

‘Don’t hope it,’—­she smiled—­’such hope would be vain.’

He could not help laughing.

‘Is it dutiful then of you’—­he paused—­’or of me?’

’Which do you prefer—­to sleep in the barn, or that I should be undutiful and disobey my stepmother?’

In a minute she gave her chin that lift in the air that he had seen before.