"And the less he is like his father the greater the chance of your doing so; isn't that it, Miss Annette?" asked the Doctor, with his pleasant smile. "Yes," said Annette, looking him straight in the face, "you're quite right; that is it." This blunt communication was received by those who heard it after very different fashions. Mrs. Derinzy knit her brows, and, after looking savagely at her niece, shrugged her shoulders at the Doctor, as much as to say, "What could you expect?" Captain Derinzy laid down his knife and fork, and muttered, "Oh, dam!" apparently in confidence to his plate. The Doctor alone maintained his equanimity unimpaired. There was a pause--considering the tremendous character of the last remark--a very short pause--and then he said: "Now, there's an instance of the injustice which is done by your sex, Mrs. Derinzy, to ours. Miss Netty--with an honesty which is _impayable_, and which, if there were a little more of it in polite society, would go far to the explosion of what Mr. Carlyle calls 'shams and wind-bags'--says she doesn't like me. She gives no reason, you observe; so that I am relegated to the same position as another member of our profession--Dr. Fell--who also was misliked, and equally without reason alleged." "I could tell you the reasons for my disliking you," said Annette. It was extraordinary, the change which had come over her face. The cheeks were full-blooded, the eyes suffused and starting from her head, the hair pushed back, the whole look fierce and defiant. "Could you?" said the Doctor; then, after looking up at her, adding very quickly, "Ah, but you must not. I don't want to hear a list of my shortcomings, or a catalogue of my faults. I'm too old to make up for the one or get rid of the other; and---- Mrs. Derinzy, I must congratulate you on your cook. It is rare indeed, in what I may be pardoned in calling these out-of-the-way regions, that one comes across anything like this _filet de sole_." He turned his face towards his hostess as he said these words, and spoke in her direction, but he scarcely moved his eyes from direct contemplation of Annette. The girl's face, with the same flush on it, was looking down, and she seemed to be working nervously with her hands, rapidly intertwining and then separating them, under the table. Captain Derinzy, at the Doctor's last remark, had given vent to a very curious sound, half-sigh of self-commiseration, half a grunt of contempt. He had not learned much in the half-century during which he had adorned life--his natural gifts had been small, and he had not taken much trouble to improve upon them--but one thing he had arrived at, and that was an appreciation of good cooking. He not merely knew the difference between good and bad dishes--in itself by no means a common acquirement--but he had a knowledge of the arcana of the art, and great high-priests whose temples were the kitchens of London clubs had taken his opinion on the merits of various _plats_.