She rather wondered why.
But she was far too shrewd not to know that there's no accounting either for likings or dislikings where a man and a woman are concerned.
As she shepherded her little party across the staircase lobby, she managed to mutter into her niece's ear: "I want you to take on Miss Burnaby for me, Bubbles--I'm anxious to make friends with Helen Brabazon." There are times when what one must call for want of a better term the social rites of existence interfere most unwarrantably with the elemental happenings of life.

But on this first evening at Wyndfell Hall the coming of coffee and of liqueurs proved a welcome diversion.

Miss Burnaby smiled a pleased smile as she sipped the Benedictine which a footman had poured into a tall green-and-gold Bohemian liqueur-glass for her.

She, at any rate, was enjoying her visit.

And so, Blanche Farrow decided, was the old lady's niece, for "How beautiful and perfect everything is!" exclaimed the girl; and indeed the room in which they now found themselves was singularly charming.
But somehow Miss Farrow felt that the speaker was not alluding so much to the room, as to the way everything was being done, and her heart warmed to the girl, for she was really anxious that Lionel's first party should be a success.
When they had settled themselves in the lovely, delicately austere-looking white parlour, as it was called, which again suggested to Blanche Farrow the atmosphere of Jane Austen's "Emma," Bubbles dutifully sat herself down by Miss Burnaby.