Lady Clive glances up under her long lashes at the flushed face, a gleam of mischief in the blue eyes so much like her brother's. "It was just like me--to forget it," she exclaims. "But then I knew you would not be interested. And, besides, I knew he would not be in your way. Phil is only a plain, blunt soldier--not at all a ladies' man." "I thought he seemed like _that_ last night," Lady Vera answers, turning the leaves of a book very fast, and not knowing how ambiguous is her answer. "Like _what_?" her friend inquires. "A ladies' man," Vera answers. "Did you? Oh, yes, when he is thrown among them he tries to make himself agreeable, but he does not fall in love, he does not run after them. When he was with us last season, Lady Eva Clarendon made a dead set at him. Phil was very civil at first--sang with her, danced with her, played the agreeable in his careless way, you know. But when he found she was losing her heart to him, he drew off, terrified--seemed to think she would marry him, willy-nilly--and went away to Italy, then back home." "I should have thought it would have been a grand match for _him_," Lady Vera answers, with unconscious emphasis of the pronoun. Lady Clive's head goes up, slightly. "For _my_ brother? Not at all, Lady Vera," she answers, with a slight touch of stiffness in her voice. "Philip met the Clarendons on equal ground. He is wealthy--that is the first and greatest thing with people, you know--our great-uncle left him a fortune. Next, he is well-born, and the general, our father, is famous over two continents. As for Lady Eva's title, that would not weigh a feather with my brother. He comes from a land, you know, where native worth and nobility take precedence over all." And having thus blandly squelched Lady Vera's arrogance, the American lady bends smilingly to her lace work again. Lady Vera only smiles. She cannot feel offended. "I deserved it all," she thinks, soberly to herself. "Oh! why do I suffer my hatred of the Clevelands and Leslie Noble to make me venomous and unjust to every American I meet? I have offended this kind friend of mine, and been rude to her brother all through my spite against those wicked people. I wish he would forgive those ridiculous words I said to him. Not look at me, indeed. How silly! He will think me wondrous vain." But Captain Lockhart does not forget. When they meet at dinner again Vera glances at him shyly several times across the silver and crystal and flowers, but the blue eyes are always on his plate, or on someone else's face--never on hers. What though she is lovely as a dream in pale-blue satin and gleaming pearls? Captain Lockhart is serenely unconscious of the color of her robe, or the half-repentance in her starry eyes. "I cannot blame him," she admits to herself, "I acted like a silly child."