"Oh, do you? Very well, I'm sure I don't mind! You see it doesn't matter in the very least what you think. After all you're only a little boy."
Savile smiled with genuine amusement, patted her golden hair paternally, and said "Of course. But if I'd happened to suggest your going to the registry office with Woodville this afternoon (I believe there's one somewhere in Kensington, near the work-house), I suppose I'd have been what you call a dear little boy, and you'd have let me have some jam for tea.... Poor girl! You must be bad." He laughed, and then said quietly, "Now, then, go ahead."
"Well, Savile, it's too dreadful, and I will confide in you. Last night"—Sylvia began talking very volubly—"that horrid old brute—you know, the Greek—asked Frank, Mr. Woodville, to dinner, and actually had the impertinence to offer him a sort of post in a bank, starting at £2000 a year, at Athens. ATHENS! Do you hear? It's in Greece."
"Don't rub it in. This is no time for geography. What else?"
"Well, it was on these conditions. Frank was to go for a year, and all that time the fiend has given word of honour never to come and see me, or anything, and if at the end of the year Frank and I are still both the same, he will give it up—about me, I mean—and get Frank the same sort of berth in London. And if we're not—just fancy making such a horrible proposition! At Willis's, too!"
"Well, what's the matter with Willis's? Would it have been all right at the 'Cheshire Cheese'?"
"What's the 'Cheshire Cheese'?"
"Never mind," said Savile mysteriously. (He didn't know.) "And if you're not still the same?"
"Oh, then"—she began to cry again—"of course the wretch thinks there might be a chance for him. He must be mad, mustn't he? But the horrible part is that Frank actually thinks of going! Fancy! How degrading! To accept a favour from my enemy! Isn't Ridokanaki exactly like Machiavelli?"
"Mac who? I see nothing Scotch in the offer. But if he were the living image of Robert Bruce or Robinson Crusoe, that's not the point. Now let's have it straight. Would you marry him in any case?"