"Absurd," agreed Mr. Carrington, helping himself to cake.
"Do you know, this brother of mine here has actually come into a fortune, and yet he won't buy me even one little motor car!"
Ned frowned and muttered something that might have checked their visitor's reply, had he noticed the laird's displeasure, but for the moment he seemed to have become very unobserving.
"Come into a fortune?" said he. "What a bit of luck! How much—a million—two million?"
"Oh, not as much as that, worse luck! But quite enough to buy at least three decent cars if he was half a sportsman! And he won't get one!"
Mr. Carrington was now trying to balance his cake in his saucer and was evidently too absorbed in his efforts to notice his host's waxing displeasure.
"In my experience," said he, "you can't get a decent car much under four hundred."
"Well," said she, "that's just the figure it would bring it to."
"Lilian!" muttered her brother wrathfully.
But at that moment Mr. Carrington coughed, evidently over a cake crumb, and failed to hear the expostulation.
"But perhaps he is going to buy you something even handsomer instead," he suggested.
"Is he!" she scoffed, with a defiant eye on her brother. "I believe he's going to blue it in something too scandalous to talk about in mixed soci-
