"Was she pretty?" Guy asked, coming down at once to a more realistic
platform.

Cyril hesitated a moment. "Well, yes," he answered, somewhat curtly,
after a short pause. "She's distinctly good-looking." And he shut
his mouth sharp. But he had said quite enough.

When a man says that of a girl, and nothing more, in an unconcerned
voice, as if it didn't matter twopence to him, you may be perfectly
sure in your own mind he's very deeply and seriously smitten.

"And young?" Guy continued.

"I should say about twenty."

"And rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice?" Montague Nevitt
put in, with a faintly cynical smile.

"Well, I don't know about that," Cyril answered truthfully. "I
haven't the least idea who she is, even. She and I had other things
to think about, you may be sure, boxed up there so long in that
narrow space, and choking for want of air, than minute investigations
into one another's pedigrees."

"WE'VE got no pedigree," Guy interposed, with a bitter smile. "So
the less she investigates about that the better."

"But SHE has, I expect," Nevitt put in hastily; "and if I were you,
Cyril, I'd hunt her up forthwith, while the iron's hot, and find
out all there is to find out about her. Clifford-Clifford? I wonder