'Surely it must be your imagination.'
'I think he deceives me, and I know he prefers that horrid woman.'
'Don't cry, Hyacinth.'
She cried more, with her face buried in a cushion.
He kissed the top of her head pityingly, as if in absence of mind. He remembered it was the first time for eight years. Then he got up and looked out of the window.
'Cecil can't be such a blackguard. He's a very good fellow. Who is this new friend that you're making yourself miserable about?'
'It isn't a new friend; it's Lady Selsey.'
Sir Charles stared in amazement.
'Eugenia! Why she's the best creature in the world—utterly incapable of—I'm perfectly certain she cares for nobody in the world but Selsey. Besides, to regard her as a rival of yours at all is grotesque, child.'
'Ah, yes; you say that because you regard me almost as your daughter, and you think I'm pretty and younger, and so on. But that's not everything. There are no standards, no rules in these things. And even if there were, the point is not what she is, but what he thinks her. He thinks her wonderful.'