"Exactly. And yet you demur at my calling you the most wonderful fellow in the world! Why, my dear old George, you are the first person in all our experience of her that has ever yet made Annette talk." "Perhaps because I am the first person who has listened to her." "Not at all! We've all of us tried it. The governor's not much, to be sure, and those who don't care to hear perpetually about the Tamburini row, and D'Orsay, and Gore House, and 'glorious Jack Reeve at the Adelphi, sir!' and those kind of interesting anecdotes, soon get bored. And I'm not much, and not often here. But my mother, as you'll soon find out, is a clever woman, capital talker, and all that; and so far as I can learn, Miss Netty has hitherto utterly refused to be interested and amused even by that most fascinating of men to the sex, your father." "My father! Why, where did he ever see Miss Derinzy?" "Here, in this very house. Ay, you may well look astonished! It appears that my people knew your father in early years, before he took up his present specialty, and that he attended my mother, who has never had anything like decent health. She grew so accustomed to him that she would never see anyone else; and Dr. Wainwright has been good enough, since they have been here, to come down two or three times a year, and look after her." "And he has seen Miss Derinzy?" "Oh yes; unprofessionally, of course--at dinner, and that kind of thing--and, as I understand, has gone in to make himself very agreeable to Annette, but has never succeeded. On the contrary." "On the contrary?" "Well, they tell me that she has always snubbed him tremendously; and that must have been a frightful blow to such a society swell as your governor--diner-out, and _raconteur_, and all that kind of thing. Fact of the matter is, she has a deuced bad provincial style about her." "Upon my honour I can't see it, can't allow it, even though, as you say, she did snub my father." "Of course not, you old muff! Antony, no doubt, thought Cleopatra's manners charming; though the 'dull cold-blooded Caesar' who wouldn't be hooked in, and the other gents whom Antony cut out, had not a good word for her. However, look here; this scheme won't do at all. Don't you see that?" "What scheme?" "Now, 'pon my word, I call this nice! I fire guns for help, ring an alarm-bell for aid, and when the aid comes I have to explain my case! Don't you recollect what I told you about my mother's plan for my marrying Annette?" "Oh--yes," said George Wainwright slowly, "I recollect now." "That's deuced kind of you. So you must see it would never do." "It would not do?" "No, of course it wouldn't! What a fellow you are, George!" said Paul, almost testily. "The girl does not suit me in the smallest degree, and--and there's another one that does." "Ah, I had forgotten about that." "My good fellow, you seem to have left your wits behind you at the office for Billy Dunlop to take care of. What the deuce are you mooning about?"