'I am offering a veiled apology,' said I.
'Stuff!' said she. 'You know you told Dolly Foster that I should make an excellent wife for a trainer.'
Oh, these women! A man had better talk to a phonograph.
'Or anybody else,' said I politely.
Miss Phaeton whipped up her horses.
'Look out! There's the mounted policeman,' I cried.
'No, he isn't. Are you afraid?" she retorted.
'I'm not fit to die,' I pleaded.
'I don't care a pin for your opinion, you know,' she continued (I had never supposed that she did); 'but what did you mean by it?'
'I never said it.'
'Oh!'
'All right—I never did.'
'Then Dolly invented it?'
'Of course,' said I steadily.
'On your honour?'
'Oh, come, Miss Phaeton!'
'Would—would other people think so?' she asked, with a highly surprising touch of timidity.
'Nobody would,' I said. 'Only a snarling old wretch would say so, just because he thought it smart.'
There was a long pause. Then Miss Phaeton asked me abruptly,—
'You never met him, did you?'
'No.'
A pause ensued. We passed the Duchess again, and scratched the nose of her poodle,
