Margaret Elizabeth was game, however.

"I was mistaken, of course," she owned lightly, as she shook hands.
"I have met so many people, and am stupid at connecting names and faces.
I recall Mr. McAllister perfectly." And straightway she plunged into
New York and what was going on there. Had he seen "Grumpy" and wasn't it
dear? And so on, and so on. Margaret Elizabeth could talk, and more than
this she could look bewitching, and did, when she slipped out of her
long coat, and with many graceful upward motions, removed her hat and
fluffed her hair.

She would make tea, she loved to, in fact she seemed bent upon luring
Augustus away from the fire and Mrs. Pennington. This young gentleman,
whose mental processes were not rapid, and who habitually overworked any
idea that found lodgment in his mind, was disposed to dwell upon River
Bend Park and Miss Bentley's strange mistake in thinking she had seen
him there, when actually, don't you know, he was on his way to New York.
It was just as well not to have the situation complicated by the
presence of her more alert relative, whose amused glances kept the glow
on Margaret Elizabeth's cheek at a most becoming pitch. Perhaps, too,
the subconscious thinking concerning that same queer mistake, which went
on while she chatted so gaily, so skilfully leading the way to safer
ground, had something to do with it.

Augustus, unaware that he was led, was as clay in her hands. He warmed
to her expressions of pleasure in the proposed dinner dance, which were
indeed entirely genuine. A dance was a dance, and Miss Bentley was
young. As she poured tea her curling lashes rested now on her cheek,
were now lifted in smiling glances at the complacent Augustus, much as