"I thought we were to be commonplace, that's all. I hear, too——" but she interrupted me now with a burst of laughter.
"Ridiculous!" she cried. "As if you and I need talk of such things. I tell you I will not have your help."
"Very well. I'll pack it up and put it away in my trunks against the day it is needed. That is settled."
"So you can be provoking, can you? I thought you were a serious Englishman, with a good deal of the man in you."
"But you don't want the man; and as I can play many parts, I brought with me the society dude in case he should be handy."
"You are angry because I won't let you interfere with my affairs, eh? So you have your pet little weaknesses, too."
"Why don't you care to speak of fashionable marriages? You mentioned one that was in the making when I was here last."
"You think it a pleasant subject for a jest?" she cried, resentfully.
"Scarcely a fair hit. You have just told me you were not yourself then—and I thought and hoped it had been abandoned, and was to be forgotten like the rest of what you said."
To this she made no immediate reply, but after a pause, asked slowly and earnestly—