"Oh, yes," said Denis. He was completely dazed. He had just felt that "one touch of nature" which nowadays sets the whole world's teeth on edge,--Eve completely and cheerfully unscrupulous, Eve wild and untamed, cruel and heartless while her deepest passions are still unengaged,--and he felt like one bewitched. "We wish to ask you," began Sir Joseph pompously. "Please let me speak," interrupted the widow. "We have noticed,--nobody could have helped noticing,--that since you have been down here you have been paying my daughter Leo unusually marked attention." "But surely you have also noticed--" Denis objected. "One moment!" cried Mrs. Delarayne. "I do not say that Leo isn't attractive. I know she's exceedingly attractive,--so attractive that, I understand, even Lord Henry appears to have fallen a victim to her charm." "Yes, and perhaps you have also heard--" the young man muttered with some agitation. "I have heard everything," said the widow. "All I suggest is, that since Leo is still a child, and has not perhaps the strength to bear a heavy heart strain as easily as a girl of Cleopatra's age, we should like any attitude you choose to adopt towards her to be made perfectly plain from the start. Do you understand, Denis? I don't wish to be unfriendly." "I can assure you," protested Denis, who had been rendered none too comfortable by the sting in Mrs. Delarayne's last remarks, "that all along I have always been in deadly earnest, I have always----" "Hush!" cried the masterful matron. "I don't want to hear now what your sentiments are. All I want you to do is to be quite plain to my little daughter. Do you want to become engaged to her, or not?" "I do most earnestly," said the young man, "but----" "But what?" growled Sir Joseph sternly. "She now says she has no feeling whatever for me," Denis explained. The baronet turned upon his secretary, scowled, and then regarded Mrs. Delarayne in astonishment. "No feeling whatever?" he repeated. "Has she actually told you this?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded with tell-tale eagerness. "Yes, this minute," Denis replied. "I can hardly believe it," he added with the usual ingenuousness of all vain people. "I can only think that a momentary infatuation for Lord Henry, who has spared no pains to----" "Do you mean that you have asked her to marry you and she's refused?" Sir Joseph enquired, observing the young man's painful discomfiture. "Yes, this very minute." "Quite positively?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded. "As far as I can make out--yes," Denis replied. He was so completely bewildered by the rebuff, that the incredulity of his two seniors made it seem all the more impossible to him. "'Pon my soul!" Sir Joseph exclaimed, utterly abashed. He could get no further. The prospects of getting Mrs. Delarayne's daughters married appeared to grow gloomier and gloomier.