“The Earl of Frothingham, is it not?” said he in a thin, small voice, his American overlaid with the most un-English of English accents.
Frothingham moved his head without relaxing from his stolid, vacant look.
“My name is Longview. I had the honour of meeting you at the hunt at Market Harboro two years ago--my daughter and I.”
Frothingham stared vaguely into space, little Longview looking up at him with an expression of ludicrously alarmed anxiety. “Oh, yes,” he drawled finally. And he extended his hand with condescending graciousness. “I remember.”
Longview expelled a big breath of relief. He was used to being forgotten, was not unused to remaining forgotten. “You may recall,” he hastened on, eager to clinch himself in an earl’s memory, “we had your cousin, Lord Ramsay’s place, Cedric Hall, that year.”
Frothingham remembered perfectly--the rich, Anglicised American who fed his neighbours well, was generous in lending mounts and traps, and was, altogether, a useful and not unamusing nuisance. Rich, but--how rich?
“And your daughter?” said Frothingham--he recalled her indistinctly as young, hoydenish, and a daring jumper.
“She is with me,” said Longview, delighted to be convinced that he was remembered, and remembered distinctly--and by a Gordon-Beauvais! “It would give me great pleasure to present you.”
As they went down the deck the little man peered at everyone with a nervous little smile--“as if he were saying, ‘Don’t kick me, please. I mean well,’” thought Frothingham. In fact, back of the peering and the smile was the desire that all should see that he had captured the Earl. They entered the library and advanced toward a young woman swathed in a huge blue cape, her eyes idly upon a book.
“Honoria, my dear,” said Longview, as uneasy as if he were speaking to the young woman without having been introduced to her, “you remember Lord Frothingham?”
Honoria slowly raised her eyelids from a pair of melancholy, indifferent grey eyes, and slightly inclined her head. The men seated themselves on either side of her; Longview rattled on in his almost hysterical way for a few minutes, then fluttered away. Honoria and Frothingham sat silent, she looking at her book, he looking at her.