He glanced at his wife with a certain sharpness. For Tressady had spoken in passing of nilghai-shooting in the Himalayas, and the remark had brought the flush of an habitual discontent to the young man's cheek. Betty merely held out a white child's wrist. "Button my glove, please, and don't talk. I have got ever so many questions to ask Marcella." Leven applied himself rather sulkily to his task while Betty pursued her inquiries. "Isn't he going to marry Letty Sewell?" "Yes," said Lady Maxwell, opening her eyes rather wide. "Do you know her?" "Why, my dear, she's Mr. Watton's cousin--isn't she?" said Betty, turning towards that young man. "I saw her once at your mother's." "Certainly she is my cousin," said that young man, smiling, "and she is going to marry Tressady at Easter. So much I can vouch for, though I don't know her so well, perhaps, as the rest of my family do." "Oh!" said Betty, drily, releasing her husband and crossing her small hands across her knee. "That means--Miss Sewell isn't one of Mr. Watton's _favourite_ cousins. You don't mind talking about your cousins, do you? You may blacken the character of all mine. Is she nice?" "Who--Letty? Why, of course she is nice," said Edward Watton, laughing. "All young ladies are." "Oh goodness!" said Betty, shaking her halo of gold hair. "Commend me to cousins for letting one down easy." "Too bad, Lady Leven!" said Watton, getting up to escape. "Why not ask Bayle? He knows all things. Let me hand you over to him. He will sing you all my cousin's charms." "Delighted!" said Bayle as he, too, rose--"only unfortunately I ought at this moment to be at Wimbledon." He had the air of a typical official, well dressed, suave, and infinitely self-possessed, as he held out his hand--deprecatingly--to Lady Leven. "Oh! you private secretaries!" said Betty, pouting and turning away from him. "Don't abolish us," he said, pleading. "We must live." "_Je n'en vois pas la necessite!_" said Betty, over her shoulder. "Betty, what a babe you are!" cried her husband, as Bayle, Watton, and Bennett all disappeared together. "Not at all!" cried Betty. "I wanted to get some truth out of somebody. For, of course, the real truth is that this Miss Sewell is--" "Is what?" said Leven, lost in admiration all the time, as Lady Maxwell saw, of his wife's dainty grace and rose-leaf colour. "Well--a--_minx!_" said Betty, with innocent slowness, opening her blue eyes very wide; "a mischievous--rather pretty--hard-hearted--flirting--little minx!" "Really, Betty!" cried Lady Maxwell. "Where have you seen her?" "Oh, I saw her last year several times at the Wattons' and other places," said Betty, composedly. "And so did you too, please, madam. I remember very well one day Mrs. Watton brought her into the Winterbournes' when you and I were there, and she chattered a great deal." "Oh yes!--I had forgotten."