Her father answered, reflectively: "Yes, these Englishmen certainly are
curious. Now, if he'd been an American judge, or colonel, we should
have known all about it in five minutes, and more than we wanted to know
before the day was out, and before the dinner was over, we should have
hated him for it."
Hilda, too, gazed reflectively, and said, "Yes, that's only too true.
Then again, how strange that he should be ashamed of helping that poor
woman in Khartoum, and after being stabbed, too."
It has been said of Americans and others that they dearly love a lord.
Why shouldn't they? Especially if he is a nice lord. Raife was not a
lord, but he was a baronet, and a very handsome and agreeable baronet.
Mr Muirhead was an American business man, and it is the habit of such
men to go to the "rock-bottom" of things, so he said to Hilda: "I wonder
whether he's a new-fledged political baronet, or one of the old
families. I expect they've got a Debrett or Burke's Peerage downstairs.
I'll look it up in the morning."
When Mr Muirhead looked up Raife's ancestry in the morning, he was not
sorry to learn that Raife was descended from the Tudor and Elizabethan
Reymingtounes. He had just completed this operation when they met Raife
in the foyer. They greeted one another with cordiality, and Mr
Muirhead induced Raife, without much difficulty, to join them in an
expedition. Hilda was divinely beautiful at the dinner of the previous
night. On this morning, riding in the bright sunlight, she was radiant.
The reserve of the previous evening was absent and she talked
intellectually. At times, her conversation was brilliant, and
interspersed with those quaint witticisms that seem only possible to
Americans, and are doubly entertaining when they flow from the lips of a
pretty American girl. As Raife sat opposite to her, listening to the
pleasing flow of her talk, he wrestled with his inclinations, and his
mind determined for him that he need not be altogether a woman-hater.
There was no harm in enjoying the society of a pretty girl as long as he
did not allow himself to become entangled. At the same time, he could
not help contrasting this sunny, vivacious young girl, with the
handsome, white-haired, courtly father, against the mysterious Gilda,
admittedly a "lady" burglar, and her sinister uncle with the unpleasing
eyes.
During a lull in the talk, which had been mostly between Hilda and
Raife, Mr Muirhead said: "I notice from your card that you are Sir
Raife Remington, a baronet. I've been wondering why you didn't mention
that fact before."