None of the guests had ever seen Miss McPherson so excited, and for a moment there was silence while they gazed at her wonderingly, as she sat with lips compressed and nostrils dilated, looking intently over their heads at something they could not see, but which evidently was very vivid to her.
Mrs. Geraldine was the first to speak, and she said, half laughingly: "You are quite as much prejudiced against Rouge et Noir as your brother, for when I told him I tried my luck at Monte-Carlo and won twenty-five dollars, he seemed horrified, and I think it took him some hours to regard me with favor again."
"Yes, and he had reason. The McPhersons have all good cause to abhor the very name of gambling," Miss McPherson replied, hitching her chair a little further away from Geraldine as from something poisonous; then, in her characteristic way of suddenly changing the conversation, she said: "You saw my nephew, Neil McPherson?"
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Jerrold replied. "We saw a good deal of him; he is very fine-looking, with such gentlemanly manners for a boy. I should be glad if Grey would imitate him," and she glanced at her son, on whose face a cloud instantly fell.
Miss McPherson saw it, and turning to him she asked: "How did you like Neil? Boys are sometimes better judges of each other than older people. Did you think him very nice?"
Remembering Miss McPherson's love for the naked truth, Grey spoke out boldly.
"No, madam; at first I did not like him at all. We had a fight!"
"A fight!" Miss McPherson repeated, in surprise, as did both Hannah and Lucy simultaneously, while Mrs. Jerrold interposed: "I think, Grey, I would not mention that, as it reflects no credit upon you."
"But he insulted me first," Grey replied, and Miss McPherson insisted: "Tell it, Grey, and do not omit anything, because I am his aunt. Tell it exactly as it was. I want the truth."
Thus encouraged, Grey began: "I know I did not do right, but he made me so angry. It was the Fourth of July and we were at Melrose stopping at the George Inn, while Mr. McPherson's family were at the Abbey Hotel close to the old ruin. There were several Americans at our house, and because of that the proprietor hung out our national flag. It was such a lovely morning, and when I went into the street and saw the Stars and Stripes waving in the English wind, I hurrahed with all my might and threw up my cap in the air.
"'May I ask why you are making so much noise?' somebody said close to me, and turning round I saw a lad about my own age, wearing a tall stove-pipe hat, for he was an Eton boy.