Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/468

 sisterly little connection; and her tone was that of a person rather cruelly misjudged.

The noble kinsman held his tongue for several seconds. Man of the world as he was, he looked utterly scandalised. Here, in this fair, frail, beautiful form, lay a depth of cynicism which he could not equal personally—which he could not fathom another, and that other a quite young girl.

"Midge," he said at last, with sincere solemnity, "you horrify me! You've often told me the kind of thing, but this is the first time I've seen you with a fly actually in the web: for I don't think I myself counted, after all. That boy is helplessly in love with you! And you were smiling upon him as though you liked him too!"

Nunthorp was touched tremulously upon the arm. "Was I?" the girl asked him, in a frightened voice. "Was I looking—like that?"

"I think you were," said Nunthorp, frankly. "And now you calmly scoff at the bare notion of accepting him! You make my blood run cold, Midge! I think you can have no heart!"

"Do you think that?" she asked, strenuously, as though he had struck her.

"No, no; you know I don't; only after seeing you look at him like that"

"Honestly, I didn't know I was looking in any particular way." Miss Anstruther added in a lowered, softened voice: "If I was—well, it wasn't meant for him."

Lord Nunthorp dropped his eye-glass.

"And it wasn't meant for you, either!" she superadded, smartly enough.

Lord Nunthorp breathed again, and ventured to recommend an immediate snub, in the pale boy's case.

When he had led her back to her chaperone, he felt easier on her account than he had been for a long time. It was obvious to him that the biter was bit at last. The right man was evidently in view, though he was not there at the dance—which was hard on the white-faced youth. Perhaps she was not the right girl for the right man—perhaps he refused to be attracted by her. That would be odd, but not impossible; and a girl who had refused to fall in love with every man who had ever fallen in love with her, was the likeliest girl in the world to care for some man who cared nothing for her—primarily to make him care. That is a woman, through and through, reflected Lord Nunthorp, out of the recesses of a recherché experience. But Midge would most certainly make him care: