"Of my personal attractions, please! Don't say of my money-bags!"
"She's like a very laudatory testimonial?"
"I just wonder how John Fanshaw endures you."
He answered her with jests, never thinking to deny what she said. He did delight in his wife's triumphs. Was there anything unamiable in that? If close union were the thing, was not that close? Her triumphs made his—what could be closer than that? At this time any criticism on him was genuinely unintelligible; he could make nothing of it, and reckoned it as of no account. And Sibylla herself, as he had said, he could always soothe.
"And she's going on quite all right?" Christine continued.
"Splendidly! We've got her quietly fixed down at Milldean, with her favourite old woman to look after her. There she'll stay. I run up to town two or three times a week—do my business——"
"Call on me?"
"I ventured so far—and get back as soon as I can."
"You must be very pleased?"
"Of course I'm pleased," he laughed, "very pleased indeed, Christine."