"No, I'm not," she answered reflectively. "I wonder why?"
"Why? Oh, you're a product of the times--the primeval instincts almost civilised out of you."
"I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!" she declared. "People like you ought to be blindfolded."
"Anything you like--so long as I'm forgiven."
"I think you'll have to be forgiven--in remembrance of the day when you took up a passenger in Hyde Park!"--smiling.
Soon afterwards people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home in her car "at any old time." Mallory paused as he was making his farewells to the two girls.
"And am I permitted--may I have the privilege of calling?" he asked with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was wholly un-English.
"My thanks." And with a slight bow he left them.
Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together with Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes' yarn.
"Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?" asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.
"I think he's a dear," declared Penelope warmly. "I liked him immensely--what I saw of him."
"He's such an extraordinary faculty for reading people," chimed in Kitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.
"Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course," replied Barry. "But he's a clever chap."
"Too clever, I think," said Nan. "He fills one with a desire to have one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted glass windows."
"What nonsense! I think he's a delightful person."
"Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who make me feel as if I'd no clothes on."
"It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material."
"Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody he meets," interpolated Barry. "He was badly taken in once. His wife was one of the prettiest women I've ever struck--and she was an absolute devil."
"He's a widower, then!" exclaimed Penelope.
"No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard. Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India."