"Ah! that is a dark saying. You are pleased to be mysterious--sphinx-like." "You _are_ a rotter, Harry!" "How subtle you are, Alec. How elusive is the lightning-play of your wit!" "_How_ much?" "The random poppy of paradox grows too often in the golden cornfield of your conversation," Harry went on, taking her hand. "Oh, rats!" exclaimed the artless girl. "Can't make out what you're driving at half the time, when you go on like that. Don't believe you know yourself." "Don't I? Really now, you know, we're almost--well--privately engaged. May I kiss you, Alec?" She blushed crimson, turned her face away, and said, "Please yourself." Unable to help laughing, he kissed the top of her head, told her to write to him, and left the house, feeling like an entirely new and recently-discovered kind of bounder. He hated the double game. It didn't amuse him a bit. But now he felt he was free for a month's holiday, during which he had, however, the unpleasant holiday task of breaking the news to Valentia. He was driving home, but changed his mind and called out to the cabman to drive to Valentia's house. He found her trying on furs--furs in mid-summer! She greeted the arrival of his exquisite discrimination and taste with clapped hands, soft, beaming eyes, and her smile--Valentia's smile. Miss Walmer couldn't smile at all--she didn't know how. She could only laugh. CHAPTER XVI MRS. FOSTER Daphne had come to say good-bye to Mrs. Foster. This lady lived in a kind of model cottage in a garden in Ham Common. It was not at all like the ideal, 'quaint' model cottages that one sees advertised by well-known firms of furnishers, though it might have been. Mrs. Foster was rebellious to Waring, and sincerely disliked anything modern. The little drawing-room, and indeed every other room in the house, was principally furnished by photographs and groups of her son Cyril--Cyril as a very plain boy, in a skirt, with hardly any eyes or hair, and a pout; Cyril as a 'perfect pet' of a sailor, at six. Then Cyril in cricketing groups (how he stood out against the other ordinary boys!)--in Etons (looking neat and supercilious), and then in his uniform, in which he looked simply lovely. Daphne had an intense and growing desire to please his mother. In fact, curiously, she was more anxious to gain her approbation than that of Cyril himself. To this end she usually remade her hats, when possible, in the train on her way to Ham Common, and her pocket when she arrived there was usually filled with artificial flowers, feathers, or other ornaments that she had taken off her hat, so as to look simple. Also she turned it down all the way round to make it look as if it were merely a protection from the sun--not a hat. To-day she wore a pink-spotted muslin dress and a straw hat, with pink ribbon. She certainly looked extremely pretty, and not at all what she had such a dread of before Mrs. Foster, smart. Mrs. Foster had a horror of smartness in the _jeune fille_.