Nor did Carleigh's monosyllabic comments and long silences in any wise discourage her. The young people giggled as persistently as the poetess talked, and altogether the journey was as nearly maddening as anything he had ever experienced.
Had it not been for the gladdening trust in a long evening with Nina under the stars his reason must have quite succumbed. As it was it merely tottered and threatened.
With the true Briton convention is a fetish. It ranks in his worshipful regard next to the throne—I was going to say above the throne.
Carleigh might kick over the traces of betrothal and marriage, incited by an unconventional matron from the States, but he couldn't think of defying the convention which forbids gentlemen to leave the dinner-table until the ladies have had a quarter of an hour, at the very least, to themselves in which to exchange confidences.
He didn't care in the least for the liqueurs and the cigars, nor for the gross stories which were not at all droll. There was only one thing he did care for.
He wanted to tell Nina he had thought it over very carefully, while Mrs. Blythe talked of Masefield and the callow ones giggled, and that he was more than ever determined to accept her proposition with its accompanying condition in the utmost good faith.
But it never once entered his mind to desert his fellow men until they were of one mind and ready to rejoin the ladies.
He did manage, however, to change to a seat nearer the door so that he might be one of the first in the drawing-room and gain Nina's side before the coveted place was pre-empted.
"At last!" he breathed with a sigh as she drew her skirt aside for him. Fashion having decreed scant skirts the action was more a habit than an actuality.
"You've missed me, then?" She spoke most casually.