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182 I was willing to go to get into your presence! Because it was so unusual, so removed from the commonplace. Doesn’t the romance appeal to you, Lynette Devon Garden?” Lord Wilfrid pleaded.

“It certainly does not!” cried Mrs. Garden, breaking into laughter, in which Mary struggled not to join.

Without a word Lord Wilfrid reached forward and started the engine. He seemed to realize that from laughter there is no appeal. In unbroken silence, but with undiminished skill, he drove them home to the old Garden house. Mary began to feel that he was in earnest in his feeling for her mother and, tender-hearted ever, to pity him. She longed to hear the story of his woes. But, glancing at her mother’s pretty unruffled face, which looked young and contented under its shadowy veil, she felt that if admirers were coming to seek her out, titled admirers from across seas, her hands would be full indeed. How should she and Jane, not to speak of Florimel, take care of a girl-mother whom lords sought, when they were all too young to think of romance, except when it was presented to them within book covers, its aroma one with printers’ ink?