He answered:

"Well, I count among my friends more than two-thirds of the subscribers to
Covent Garden Opera.... By the way, do you happen to be connected with the
Moncreiffs of Suddon Wester? They have a charming house in Hyde Park
Terrace. But probably you know it?"

Audrey burst out laughing. She laughed loud and violently till the tears
stood in her eyes.

"Well," he said, at a loss, deprecatingly. "Perhaps these Moncreiffs _are_
rather weird."

"I was only laughing," she said in gasps, but with a complete secret
composure. "Because we had such an awful quarrel with them last year. I
couldn't tell you the details. They're too shocking."

He gave a dubious smile.

"D'you know, dear young lady," he recommenced after a brief pause, "I
should adore to paint a portrait of you laughing. It would be very well
hung in the Salon. Your face is so strangely expressive. It is utterly
different, in expression, from any other face I ever saw--and I have
studied faces."

Heedless of the general interest which she was arousing, Audrey leaned on
the rail of the screen of flowers, and gave herself up afresh to laughter.
Monsieur Dauphin was decidedly puzzled. The affair might have ended in
hysteria and confusion had not Miss Ingate, with Nick and Tommy, come