"I do love her little way of listening to people talking among themselves, and picking their brains and passing their things off as her own," Major Norris said. "And that of patronizing her betters and flatly contradicting people on subjects she hasn't had the chance of understanding--even if she had the brains." "The way she explained to me how we run elections in the States," added Mrs. Dinwiddie's husband, a humble, unconsidered dependent, occasionally found handy to fetch and carry for his liege lady. "She'd just as soon tell the Almighty the way to run the Universe, you bet----" "But that charming laugh, Mr. Dinwiddie, surely that atones for much," murmured Lady Seaton, arriving from the convent to the Carnival tune that Bertie Trevor was whistling, as he had done at intervals during the whole interview, to the deep disgust and irritation of Dorris, who was more impatient than most people of tiresome tricks like humming and whistling--tricks she arrogated to herself as the peculiar privilege of one too lovely and attractive not to be always sure to please whatever she did. Dorris was, of course, not aware that whenever anyone came down the path or up the path or from the convent steep, Bertie, standing out on a little jut of rock, looking idly about, instantly began that Carnival tune, unless it was a stranger. In that case he whistled the Marseillaise and the talk paused. "O Lord, that everlasting gurgle," growled the Major; "it's all over the place from morning till night. What the dickens does she do it for?" Dorris's fists clenched themselves; she remembered bare-faced admiration of that charming laugh, and other tributes to her fascination, bold almost to impudence not a week old, from this false man. "Well," replied Mrs. Dinwiddie, "I judge the poor gell can't so much as go to sleep without acting. She's just made up of affectations right through, top skirt and lining, inside and out. I should be surprised if her mother _didn't_ get headache and her father the hump." "I don't care," Bertie began doggedly, "if she has got the voice of a screech-owl----" "Oh, come now, Mr. Trevor, her voice is well enough, poor girl, if she wouldn't always yell at the top of it." "Beauty is beauty, however soulless," he continued stolidly. "And if she does strut like a peacock----" "Et tu, Bertie!" the poor peacock sighed metaphorically. "--She's got the peacock's justification. Her hair is perfectly stunning." "So is her voice," muttered the Major. "Assez, assez! cette pauvre demoiselle," M. Isidore remonstrated, as he had continued to do at intervals. "And she can't help it," added the chivalrous Bertie.