How they must dislike you, and how clever you
must be!"
"I don't know that I'm so much disliked," the young man answered, with a
twinkle in his eyes, "but I flatter myself that I have brought a new
note into diplomacy. I was always taught that there were thirty-seven
different ways of telling a lie, which is to state a diplomatic fact. I
have swept them all away. I tell the truth."
"How daring," Maggie murmured, "and how wonderfully original! What
should you say, now, if I asked you if my nose wanted powdering?"
"I should start by saying that the question was outside the sphere of my
activities," he decided. "I should then proceed to add, as a private
person, that a little dab on the left side would do it no harm."
"I begin to believe," she confessed, "that all I have heard of you is
true."
"Tell me exactly what you have heard," he begged. "Leave out everything
that isn't nice. I thrive on praise and good reports."
"To begin with, then, that you are an extraordinarily shrewd young man,"
she replied, "that you speak seven languages perfectly and know your way
about every capital of Europe, and that you have ideas of your own as to
what is going to happen during the next six or seven years."
"You've been moving in well-informed circles," he admitted. "Now shall I
proceed to turn the tables upon you?"
"You can't possibly know anything about me," she declared confidently.
"I could tell you what I've discovered from personal observation," he
replied.
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