"Thank you," said Vernon, smiling a little. It is pleasant to be appreciated. "Yes, really very decently, indeed. I daresay it wouldn't have hurt a fly, but if you'd been the sort of man he thinks you are--However that's neither here nor there. He hits you with a stick, locks the child into her room--What did you say?" "Nothing," said Vernon. "All right. I didn't hear it. Locks her in her room, and wires to my sister. Takes a carriage to Sevenoaks to do it too, to avoid scandal. I happen to be at my sister's, on my way from Cairo to Norway, so I undertake to run down. He meets me at the station, and wants me to go straight home and blackguard Betty. But I prefer to deal with principals." "You mean--" "I mean that I know as well as you do that whatever has happened has been your doing and not that dear little idiot's. Now, are you going to tell me about it?" He had rehearsed already a form of words in which "Brother artists" should have loomed large. But now that he rose, shrugged his shoulders and spoke, it was in words that had not been rehearsed. "Look here, Miss Desmond," said he, "the fact is, you're right. I haven't any intentions--certainly not dishonourable ones. But I was frightfully bored in the country, and your niece is bored, too--more bored than I am. No one ever understands or pities the boredom of the very young," he added pensively. "Well?" "Well, that's all there is to it. I liked meeting her, and she liked meeting me." "And the fortune-telling? Do you mean to tell me you didn't enjoy holding the child's hand and putting her in a silly flutter?" "I deny the flutter," he said, "but--Well, yes, of course I enjoyed it. You wouldn't believe me if I said I didn't." "No," said she. "I enjoyed it more than I expected to," he added with a frankness that he had not meant to use, "much more. But I didn't say a word of love---only perhaps--" "Only perhaps you made the idea of it underlie every word you did speak. Don't I know?" said Miss Desmond. "Bless the man, I've been young myself!" "Miss Betty is very charming," said he, "and--and if I hadn't met her--" "If you hadn't met her some other man would. True; but I fancy her father would rather it had been some other man." "I didn't mean that in the least," said Vernon with some heat. "I meant that if I hadn't met her she would have gone on being bored, and so should I. Don't think me a humbug, Miss Desmond. I am more sorry than I can say that I should have been the means of causing her any unhappiness." "'Causing her unhappiness,'--poor little Betty, poor little trusting innocent silly little girl! That's about it, isn't it?" It was so like it that he hotly answered: "Not in the least." "Well, well," said Miss Desmond, "there's no great harm done. She'll get over it, and more's been lost on market days. Thanks." She lighted a second cigarette and sat very upright, the cigarette in her mouth and her hands on the handle of her stick.