She looked at him with a rather distrustful and inquisitive glance.
"How funnily everything has turned out," she began rather timidly. It was just as he had expected her to begin.
"Funnily? Oh, I don't see that. I call it all very natural," he said.
"Natural!" Ora repeated, lifting her brows. Ashley nodded, and drank some champagne.
Ora seemed disappointed to find him taking that view. The expression of her face set him smiling again.
"I don't think I like you to laugh," she said. "It seems rather unkind, I think."
He raised his eyes to hers suddenly. "Then I won't laugh," he said, in a lower tone. "But I wasn't laughing in that way at all, really." He had, at all events, grown grave now; he pushed his chair a little back and leant his elbow on the table, resting his head on his hand.
"If I told you all about how it happened—" she began.
"Your letter told me," he interrupted. "I don't want you to tell me again."
Her eyes grew affectionate. She laid a hand on his arm.