He laughed again very contentedly. Mrs. Raymore's admiration pleased him, since she was not very easy herself to please. He was glad she approved of Sibylla, though as a rule his own opinion was enough for him.
"Well, they aren't always questioning. That would be fatiguing in a wife—really as bad as continually discussing the Arian heresy, as old Johnson says. But I daresay," he lowered his voice, "Lady Harriet would excite a query or two."
"You've told me nothing about Sibylla. I shall have to find it all out for myself."
"That's the only knowledge worth having; and I'm only learning myself still, you know."
"Really, that's an unusually just frame of mind for a husband. I've high hopes of you, Grantley."
"Good! Because you know me uncommonly well."
She thought a moment.
"No, not so very well," she said. "You're hard to know."
He took that as a compliment; probably most people would, since it seems to hint at something rare and out of the common; inaccessibility has an aristocratic flavour.
"Oh, I suppose we all have our fastnesses," he said with a laugh which politely waived any claim to superiority without expressly abandoning it.