"I wish you wouldn't call me dear Lady," she said; "it's not the mode any more now."
"What may I call you?" he had to ask, turning to look in her eyes.
"You needn't call me anything. I hate being called names. That's a pretty girl--not the dark one, the one with the fur hat."
He turned to look.
Two girls were walking briskly under the falling leaves. And the one with the fur hat was Betty. But it was at the other that he gazed even as he returned Betty's prim little bow. He even turned a little as the carriage passed, to look more intently at the tall figure in shabby black whose arm Betty held.
"Well?" said Lady St. Craye, breaking the silence that followed.
"Well?" said he, rousing himself, but too late. "You were saying I might call you--"
"It's not what I was saying--it's what you were looking. Who is the girl, and why don't you approve of her companion?"
"Who says I don't wear a window in my breast?" he laughed. "The girl's a little country girl I knew in England--I didn't know she was in Paris. And I thought I knew the woman, too, but that's impossible: it's only a likeness."
"One nice thing about me is that I never ask impertinent questions--or hardly ever. That one slipped out and I withdraw it. I don't want to know anything about anything and I'm sorry I spoke. I see, of course, that she is a little country girl you knew in England, and that you are not at all interested in her. How fast the leaves fall now, don't they?"
"No question of your's could be im--could be anything but flattering. But since you are interested--"
"Not at all," she said politely.
"Oh, but do be interested," he urged, intent on checking her inconvenient interest, "because, really, it is rather interesting when you come to think of it. I was painting my big picture--I wish you'd come and see it, by the way. Will you some day, and have tea in my studio?"
"I should love it. When shall I come?"
"Whenever you will."
He wished she would ask another question about Betty, but she wouldn't. He had to go on, a little awkwardly.
"Well, I only knew them for a week--her and her aunt and her father--and she's a nice, quiet little thing. The father's a parson--all of them are all that there is of most respectable."