“Reginald,” she said, sitting up and facing him, “do you remember the last time we danced together?”
“No! I think not!” he answered dubiously.
(I think you do, Sir Reginald.)
“It was at the Lancasters; we danced together half the evening.”
“Did we? Then we must have made ourselves rather remarkable,” he replied, with a short laugh, breaking off a large bit of fern and critically examining its fronds.
“Do you remember the ball at Burford House?”
Considering that it was at that very ball he had proposed to her, he could not well plead forgetfulness.
“I do, of course,” he answered, glancing at her quickly, and pausing in the act of dissecting the fern bit by bit. “What is the good of calling up these reminiscences? There are some things which are best forgotten,” he added with cool judicial serenity.
“Do you wish to forget that evening, Reginald?” she asked in a tone of low reproach, and raising her fan to hide her trembling lips.
“Well, no,” he replied slowly and with evident reluctance. “Not yet; but I quite agree with Balzac that ‘Life would be intolerable without a certain amount of forgetting;’ and I am glad to say that I have forgotten much.”