shamelessly affectionate by disposition, why can't I be nice to babies?
I've a hazy but dreadful notion that there's something wrong about me,
Mr. Siward."

He scrutinised the pretty features, anxiously; "I can't see it," he
said.

"But I mean it--almost seriously. I don't want to be so aloof, but--I
don't like to touch other people. It is rather horrid of me I suppose to
be like those silky, plumy, luxurious Angora cats who never are civil to
you and who always jump out of your arms at the first opportunity."

He laughed--and there was malice in his eyes, but he did not know her
well enough to pursue the subject through so easy an opening.

It had occurred to her, too, that her simile might invite elaboration,
and she sensed the laugh in his silence, and liked him for remaining
silent where he might easily have been wittily otherwise.

This set her so much at ease, left her so confident, that they were on
terms of gayest understanding presently, she gossiping about the guests
at Shotover House, outlining the diversions planned for the two weeks
before them.

"But we shall see little of one another; you will be shooting most of
the time," she said--with the very faintest hint of challenge--too
delicate, too impersonal to savour of coquetry. But the germ of it was
there.

"Do you shoot?"