The question had to be repeated.  Richard surveyed his cousin hastily, and praised her looks.

“Pale!” Mrs. Doria sighed.

“Rather pale, aunt.”

“Grown very much—­don’t you think, Richard?”

“Very tall girl indeed, aunt.”

“If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard!  I’m sure I give her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still continues.  I think she does not prosper away from her old companion.  She was accustomed to look up to you, Richard”—­

“Did you get Ralph’s letter, aunt?” Richard interrupted her.

“Absurd!” Mrs. Doria pressed his arm.  “The nonsense of a boy!  Why did you undertake to forward such stuff?”

“I’m certain he loves her,” said Richard, in a serious way.

The maternal eyes narrowed on him.  “Life, my dear Richard, is a game of cross-purposes,” she observed, dropping her fluency, and was rather angered to hear him laugh.  He excused himself by saying that she spoke so like his father.

“You breakfast with us,” she freshened off again.  “The Foreys wish to see you; the girls are dying to know you.  Do you know, you have a reputation on account of that”—­she crushed an intruding adjective—­“System you were brought up on.  You mustn’t mind it.  For my part, I think you look a credit to it.  Don’t be bashful with young women, mind!  As much as you please with the old ones.  You know how to behave among men.  There you have your Drawing-room Guide!  I’m sure I shall be proud of you.  Am I not?”

Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.

A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes to spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn along, he pulled out his watch to note the precise number of minutes he could dedicate to this charitable office.

“Pardon me,” said Mrs. Doria.  “You want manners, my dear boy.  I think it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch in my presence.”

Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular hour, up to which he was her servant.

“Fiddlededee!” the vivacious lady sang.  “Now I’ve got you, I mean to keep you.  Oh!  I’ve heard all about you.  This ridiculous indifference that your father makes so much of!  Why, of course, you wanted to see the world!  A strong healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely house—­no friends, no society, no amusements but those of rustics!  Of course you were indifferent!  Your intelligence and superior mind alone saved you from becoming a dissipated country boor.—­Where are the others?”

Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.

“My damozel dropped something,” Adrian explained.

Her mother asked what it was.

“Nothing, mama,” said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as before.

Overborne by his aunt’s fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he edged in a word for Ralph.  When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him immediately.