For some reason the man seemed quite struck with this statement and eyed her with keenness as he said: "Oh--really? Well, my name is Austin Page." At the candid blankness of her face he showed a boyish flash of white teeth in a tanned face. "Do you mean to say you've never heard of me?" "_Should_ I?" said Sylvia, with a graceful pretense of alarm. "Do you write, or something? Lay it to my ignorance. It's immense." He shook his head. He smiled down on her. She noticed now that his eyes were very kind as well as clear and keen. "No, I don't write, or anything. There's no reason why you should ever have heard of me. I only thought--I thought possibly Molly or Uncle George might have happened to mention me." "I'm only on from the West for a visit," explained Sylvia. "I never was in Lydford before. I don't know the people there." "Well then, to avoid Morrison's strictures on introductions I'll add to my name the information that I am thirty-two years old; a graduate of Columbia University; that I have some property in Colorado which gives me a great deal of trouble; and a farm with a wood lot in Vermont which is the joy of my heart. I cannot endure politics; I play the flute, like my eggs boiled three minutes, and admire George Meredith." His manoeuvers with his sleeve were so preposterous that Sylvia now cried to him: "Oh, don't twist around that way. You'll give yourself a crick in the neck. Here's my handkerchief. We were going to share that, anyhow." "And you," he went on gravely, wiping his face with the bit of cambric, "are Sylvia Marshall, presumably Miss; you can laugh at a joke on yourself; are not afraid to wash your face with kitchen soap; and apparently are the only girl in the twentieth century who has not a mirror and a powder-puff concealed about her person." All approbation was sweet to Sylvia. She basked in this. "Oh, I'm a Hottentot, a savage from the West, as I told you," she said complacently. "You've been in Lydford long enough to hear Morrison hold forth on the idiocies of social convention, the while he neatly manipulates them to his own advantage." Sylvia had dreaded having to speak of Morrison, but she was now greatly encouraged by the entire success of her casual tone, as she explained, "Oh, he's an old friend of my aunt's, and he's been at the house a good deal." She ventured to try herself further, and inquired with a bright look of interest, "What do you think of his engagement to your cousin Molly?" He was petrified with astonishment. "_Molly_ engaged to _Morrison_!" he cried. "We can't be talking about the same people. I mean _Felix_ Morrison the critic." She felt vindicated by his stupefaction and liked him for it. "Why, yes; hadn't you heard?" she asked, with an assumption of herself seeing nothing surprising in the news.