"Is Emmeline pretty?"
"I thought so,—if she had not been quite so grave."
"Ah, that you have to expect. Em and Edred are solemn individuals—far too busy doing good to everybody, to have time for laughing."
"It must be very delightful to be always doing good to people."
"Well, yes,—if it were not for the bother."
Dorothea glanced at him questioningly.
"But that is not your real self speaking," she said.
An odd expression came over Mervyn's face, half comical, half assenting.
"What makes you suppose so?"
"I am sure it is not. You are trying to seem different from what you are."