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Lord Lullworth smilingly asked for some superficial information regarding the Cellar.

And then Mr. Owen Glendower Richmond and Arthur Galmyn went off together, and when Guy Overton found that he had to hurry off—the cuisine at the Casa Maccaroni was at its best between the hours of six and seven—Willie Bateman, who wanted to have a quiet word with him went away by his side. (He wondered if Guy would think it worth his while to pay a hundred pounds to have a stereo-block made of the river view of The Gables for an evening paper, to be inserted with a historical sketch of the house and some account of the family of the new purchaser.)

Lord Lullworth laughed pleasantly—confidentially, when he and Amber were left alone together.

“They are all so clever,” said Amber apologetically. She had really quite a faculty interpreting people’s thoughts.

“Yes,” said he, “they are, as you say, a rummy lot.”

Then she too laughed.

“That’s your way of putting it,” she said.

“I suppose so. What fun chaps can find in jabbering away like that beats me. They’re a bit pinkeyed, aren’t they now?”

Amber evaded a question which might possibly be enigmatical, she thought.

“But they are really very clever,” said she. “Arthur Galmyn was a poet, but I saw that he had not patience enough to wait for fame to come to him.”

“Why couldn’t he buy a practice in a populous suburban district?” asked Lord Lullworth. “If a chap can’t succeed as a specialist in town he should set up as a general practitioner in the suburbs or in the provinces.”

“I suppose a poet is a sort of literary specialist,” said Amber. “Never mind,—he is all right now: he is making money on the Stock Exchange.”

“You made him go on the Stock Exchange?”

“Oh, yes; we talked it over together. And I got Guy Overton to join the Technical School of Literature, and I believe he is improved by doing so already.”

“And you got the other chap to set up the school, I suppose?”

“It was an old idea of mine. When people have a Conservatoire of Music, and the Academy School of Painting, why should the art of Literary Composition be allowed to struggle on as best it can without instruction or advice?”

“That’s just what I should like to know. And the other bounder—I mean the chap who talked that about bulldogs and the cats and things—a bit of a rotter he was, wasn’t he? Did you advise him in any direction? I didn’t quite make out what his line was.”

“Yes, it was I who suggested to him the splendid possibilities there were in the way of advertising things. I showed him in what a haphazard way people advertised just now, and persuaded him that there was money in any systematic scheme of advertising, and he has gone far ahead of anything I ever imagined to be possible.”

“I should think he has. And what are they up to, the lot of them, can you guess, Miss Severn?”

“Up to?—what are they up to? Why, haven’t I just explained that each of them is making a profession——”

“Oh, yes; but do you fancy that they’re doing it for love of the profession or for—for—any other reason?”

“I don’t quite see what you mean, Lord Lullworth.”

“It’s a bit rough to be frank with a girl; and it’s rarely that a chap has to say just what he means, but there are times...”

He spoke apologetically and paused, allowing his smile to rest upon her for a moment. It was the smile of a man who hopes he hasn’t gone too far, and trusts to get out of an untenable position by the aid of a temporising smile.

She returned his smile quite pleasantly. She knew that the sentences over the utterance of which men hesitate are invariably the most interesting that they have to speak.

“What is it?” she asked. “Everybody speaks frankly to me: they don’t treat me as they do other girls, you know.”

“It’s a dangerous experiment talking frankly to a girl,” said he. “But if it comes to that, it’s not so dangerous an experiment as a girl talking frankly to a man—leading him to do things that he hasn’t a mind to do—may be that he hates doing.”

“I was born in an atmosphere of experiments,” said she. “I delight in having dealings with new forces, and making out their respective coefficients of energy.”

“Oh; then you don’t happen to think that these chaps who were here just now are in love with you? That’s frank enough, isn’t it?”

Her face had become roseate, but she was not angry. Whatever she may have been she was sufficiently like other girls to be able to refrain from getting angry at the suggestion that four young men were in love with her at the same time.

“It’s nonsense enough,” she said. “You have quite misunderstood the situation, Lord Lullworth. I like Guy Overton and all the others greatly, and I hope they like me. But they are no more in love with me than I am in love with them.”

“Do you fancy that a chap allows himself to be led about by a girl all for the fun of the thing?” he asked.

“Why should a man think it ridiculous for a woman to be his friend and to give him the advice of a friend—the advice that he would welcome if it were to come from a brother?” she enquired.

“I don’t know why, but I know that he does,” said Lord Lullworth. “Anyhow, you don’t think of any of the chaps who were here as a lover?”

“I do not,” she cried emphatically—almost eagerly.

“That’s all right,” he said quietly—almost sympathetically.

“It is all right,” she said. “I believe in the value of friendship according to Plato.”

“Have you ever thought of calculating its coefficient of energy, or its breaking strain?” said he.

“I do not like people who make fun—who try to make fun of what I believe, Lord Lullworth,” said she.

“Do you dislike alarum clocks?” he asked blandly.

“Alarum clocks?” She was puzzled.

“Yes; I’m an alarum clock—one of the cheap make, I admit, but a going concern and quite effective. I want to rattle in your ears until your eyes are opened.”

“You certainly do the rattling very well. But I’m not asleep. I know what you mean to say about my friends.”