"I was lunching in St. Mary's yesterday with Arthur Lonsdale," he was explaining, "and I noticed you from the lodge. I should have come up and spoken to you myself, but I was rather frightened by your friend's eye-glass. In fact, I'm still not at all at ease with her. She looks deuced clever, I mean, don't you think?"
"Poor girl, but I suppose it's not such a bore for a girl as it would be for a man. I'm an awful ass myself, you know. I mean, I'm absolutely incapable of doing anything."
"How did you know we belonged to the company?" asked Dorothy, implying that with all his modesty he must possess acute powers of judgment hidden away somewhere.
"Well, to tell you the truth, we didn't know. Somebody said your friend was a medical student, only I wasn't going to have that, and some man said he'd noticed you at the station, so Lonnie and I went to the theater on the off-chance and tried to spot you."
"Oh, rather. Only, then we couldn't spot your name. I was all for Clarice Beauchamp."
"She's an awfully horrid girl," said Dorothy, quickly.
"Is she? I'm sorry to hear that. And Lonnie betted you were Fay Onslow. So we were quits. Funny thing you should have the same name as Lonnie. No relation, I suppose?"
He was evidently so sure of this that Dorothy was rather piqued and asked, loftily, which Lonsdale he was.
"Oh, then I am a relation," said Dorothy. "Though of course a very, very distant one."
"By Jove! that's great!" said Clarehaven.
He seemed enthusiastic, but Dorothy could not make out whether he believed her or not, and she rather wished she had kept the relationship for the dressing-room. She hoped that Sylvia would not give Lonsdale an impression that she claimed to be his first cousin; this abrupt plunge into the whirlpool of society might make her act extravagantly. What a pity that she had not known who he was before they met, and "Oh!" she cried, aloud.
"Nothing. At least I think I touched a fish," said Dorothy.
But her exclamation was caused by dismay at recalling that she had addressed him as "Arthur Lonsdale, Esquire," when for the first time in her life she might have written "The Honorable Arthur Lonsdale," for everybody to see. What must he have thought of her ignorance? And now here in a canoe with her was Lord Clarehaven, but, owing to the foolish modesty that English titles affect, she did not know if he was a marquis, an earl, a viscount, or a mere baron. The prospect of the green river was leaden with the thought of her stupidity.