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184 done anything except be foolish, and I suppose that’s to be expected if he’s in love,” she thought generously. “We have not breakfasted, Lord Kelmscourt,” she said, with her smile that everybody found comforting. “I hope you are a little hungry, or we shall be embarrassed; it is late for us, in summer. We shall have great appetites.”

Lord Wilfrid Kelmscourt proved no exception to the rule; he quite brightened as he received Mary’s sympathetic look.

“I’m not particularly sharp set, Miss Garden,” he said. “We had a good breakfast, your brother—your uncle, is it? How curious!—and I. But I’ve no doubt I still can peck a bit.”

“That’s a suitable thing to do when you’re coming into a Garden domain!” laughed Mary. “We have such a useful name! It makes itself into little mild jokes all the time.” She threw off her close straw hat and brushed up her damp hair, which its pressure had made into small rings of glossy brown on her forehead.

The romantic lord, who for romance’s sake was ready to become such an unromantic person as a begoggled chauffeur, in a long, shapeless coat, looked admiringly at Mary.

“Fancy your being Miss Lynette Devon’s