She looked rather annoyed.
"You did, but not intentionally."
"I don't see that you have really any right to suppose——Why shouldn't I go in my own orchard, at any hour I like?"
"But, Val—of course you ought to go in your own orchard. But why don't you meet Romer there?"
"He is so straight, so good-looking, and, under all that manner, he's exactly like Vesuvius. Yes. Fancy, you're living with a volcano and you don't appreciate it!"
"Gillie, it's really rather stupid of you to put things like that. It isn't a question of liking either one person or another. If Romer were ill, or anything like that, don't you know——"
"I know you'd devote yourself to him, like a sister or a mother. You'd put Harry aside for a time as a pleasure that mustn't be indulged in. Now that's just where you're wrong. No! I want to see you being ever so good and kind to dear Harry as a duty to a ne'er-do-well of a cousin; and regarding Romer——"
She did not answer.
"My point is," he went on, "that it's really too distressingly conventional of you to suppose that because you happen to be legally married there can be no sort of romance. Only comradeship, or perhaps affectionate sentiment? That's what you believe."