"She being eighteen and you twenty-five," his mother answered, smiling satirically. "But somebody is coming. I can't talk to you now; only this one thing I must say. Play into my hands as you can if you will, and you'll be engaged to May before the week's over." He broke into a roar of laughter which had a sound of being as much nerves as amusement. "Is this a comic opera?" he demanded. "Yes, dear Jacky," his mother retorted, resuming her light manner, "that's just what it is. Don't you miss your cue." She left him, and went gayly forward to greet the new-comers, ladies who had just driven up, and Jack followed her lead with a countenance from which disturbance and bewilderment had not entirely vanished. XI THE GAME OF CROSS-PURPOSES Mrs. Neligage escaped from her friends speedily, with that easy swiftness which is in the power of the socially adroit, and returned to the piazza by a French window which opened at the side of the house, and so was not in sight from the front of the club. There she came upon Count Shimbowski comfortably seated in a sunny corner, smoking and meditating. "Ah, Count," she said, as he rose to receive her, "this is unexpected pleasure. Are you resting from the strain of continual adulation?" "What you say?" he responded. Then he dropped into his seat with a despairing gesture. "Dis Eengleesh," he said; "eet ees eemposseeble eet to know. I have told Mees Wentsteele dat she ees very freesh, and--" He ended with a groan, and a snug little Hungarian oath under his breath. "Fresh!" echoed Mrs. Neligage, with a laugh like a redbird whisking gayly from branch to branch. "My dear Count, she is anything but fresh. She is as stale as a last year's love-affair. But she ought to be pleased to be told she is fresh." "Oh, I say: 'You be so freesh, Mees Wentsteele,' and she, she say: 'Freesh, Count Shimbowski? You result me!' Den day teel me freesh mean fooleesh, _sotte_. What language ees dat?" "Oh, it isn't so bad as you think, Count. It is only _argot_ anyway, and it doesn't mean _sotte_, but _naïve_. Besides, she wouldn't mind. She is enough of a woman to be pleased that you even tried to tell her she was young." "But no more ees she young." "No more, Count. We are all of us getting to be old enough to be our own grandmothers. Miss Wentstile looks as if she was at the Flood and forgot to go in when it rained." The Count looked more puzzled than amused at this sally, but his politeness came to his rescue. A compliment is always the resource of a man of the world when a lady puzzles him. "Eet ees only Madame Neleegaze to what belong eemortal youth," he said with a bow. She rose and swept him a courtesy, and then took from her dress one of the flowers she was wearing, which chanced to be very portly red carnations. "You are as gallant as ever, Count," she said, "so that your English doesn't matter. Besides that, you have a title; and American women love a title as a moth loves a candle."