that was almost impatient, and while he lighted he pursued with genial gaiety: "I'm not going to allow you to pretend that you doubt of my having dreamed for years of the pleasure of seeing you here again, or of the diabolical ingenuity that I exercised to enable your visit to take place in the way most convenient to both of us. You used to say the queen-mother disliked you. You see to-day how much!"
"She has ended by finding me useful," said Rose. "That brings me exactly to what I told you just now I wanted to say to you."
Tony had gathered the loose net of the hammock into a single strand, and, while he smoked, had lowered himself upon it, sideways, in a posture which made him sit as in a swing. He looked surprised and even slightly disconcerted, like a man asked to pay twice. "Oh, it isn't then what you did say———?"
"About your use of my name? No, it isn't that—it's something quite different." Rose waited; she stood before him as she had stood before her previous interlocutor. "It's to let you know the interest I take in Paul Beever. I take the very greatest."
