"I know what you're meditating!" she snapped.
"Lord, Aunt Hannah, so are you!" he drawled. "But it takes genius to get away with it."
The old lady was highly delighted, but she concealed it and began such a rapid-fire tirade against him that he was almost afraid it might bewilder him enough to affect his steering.
"Talk to _me_ of disinterested friendship between you and a girl of that sort!" she ended. "Not that I'd care, if I found material in her to amuse me, and a monthly insult drawn to my order against a solvent bank balance! What is she, James; a pretty blue-stocking whom nobody 'understands' except you?"
"Make up your own mind," he repeated, as he brought around the car and stopped before his own doorstep. "I'm not trying to tell _you_ anything. She is here. Look at her. If you like her, be her friend--and mine."
Jacqueline had waited tea for him; the table was in the library, kettle simmering over the silver lamp; and the girl was standing before the fire, one foot on the fender, her hands loosely linked behind her back.
She glanced up with unfeigned pleasure as his step sounded outside along the stone hallway; and the smile still remained, curving her lips, but died out in her eyes, as Mrs. Hammerton marched in, halted, and stared at her unwinkingly.
Desboro presented them; Jacqueline came forward, offering a shy hand to Aunt Hannah, and, bending her superb young head, looked down into the beady eyes which were now fairly electric with intelligence.
"I asked Mrs. Hammerton to have tea with----"
"I asked myself," remarked Aunt Hannah, laying her other hand over Jacqueline's--she did not know just why--perhaps because she was vain of her hands, as well as of her feet and "figger."
She seated herself on the sofa and drew Jacqueline down beside her.
"This young man tells me that you are cataloguing his grandfather's accumulation of ancient tin-ware."
"Yes," said Jacqueline, already afraid of her. And the old lady divined it, too, with not quite as much pleasure as it usually gave her to inspire trepidation in others.
Her shrill voice was a little modified when she said:
"Where did you learn to do such things? It's not usual, you know."
"You have heard of Jean Louis Nevers," suggested Desboro.