"
"How d'you mean--never speak? Why, she's full of talk."
"How well she listened to him!" was Lady Holme's mental comment.
"If half the world heard it doesn't matter if you and I choose it
shouldn't. Unless--"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you did anything last night--afterwards--that will make a
scandal?"
"Ah!"
"Did you?"
"That's all right."
He applied himself with energy to the toast. Lady Holme recognised, with
a chagrin which she concealed, that Lord Holme was not going to allow
himself to be "managed" into any revelation. She recognised it so
thoroughly that she left the subject at once.
"We'd better forgive and forget," she said. "After all, we are married
and I suppose we must stick together."
There was a clever note of regret in her voice.
"Are you sorry?" Lord Holme said, with a manner that suggested a
readiness to be surly.
"For what?"
"That we're married?"
She sat calmly considering.
"Am I? Well, I must think. It's so difficult to be sure. I must compare
you with other men--"
"If it comes to that, I might do a bit of comparin' too."
"I should be the last to prevent you, old boy. But I'm sure you've often
done it already and always made up your mind afterwards that she wasn't
quite up to the marrying mark."
"Who wasn't?"
"The other--horrid creature."
He could not repress a chuckle.
"You're deuced conceited," he said.
"You've made me so.
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