"I don't know. But only Cyril will do for me. Oh! the jolly way he has of saying 'Righto' and 'You're all right,' and calling me 'little girl!' Oh, he is a dear!"
"Oh, well, if he says such brilliant things as that!"
"It isn't what he says——"
"Oh, hush, Daphne, here is Romer. I shan't tell him a word about it. Well, I'll think it over." She called Daphne back and said in a half-hearted way—
"I suppose it wouldn't do just to sort of please Harry by marrying Van, and then seeing that silly boy now and then. You'd so soon get tired of him—but, no! that wouldn't be right. Forget that I said it—I don't mean it."
"I couldn't stand Van at all," said Daphne definitely, "whether I saw Cyril or not."
"Then you shan't be bothered with him. But can't you give up Cyril? I know I'm right about it. It isn't only the hard-upness and the impossibility—of course, I know he's got relations and all that—but, it's he himself. You'll get bored with him, too, in a different way."
"I like him so much now," pleaded Daphne.
Romer came in and Valentia merely told him at great length every word of the foregoing conversation with lavish comments by herself. Secretly Romer was bitterly disappointed when he realised that the possibility of his being left alone with his wife was more remote, but of course he agreed with Valentia, as she changed her mind a dozen times on the subject, and as usual the conversation ended in a telephone message to Harry to come round at once.