“Surely my eyes are red with crying.”
He bent down so anxiously to examine them, that she laughed outright.
“Don’t be a goose!” she added sweetly. “I wouldn’t marry you if they were.”
“You are such a will-o’-the-wisp, Gwen. I sha’n’t feel safe until eleven o’clock to-morrow, and so I tell you fairly.”
“But you are not obliged to be safe then,” she retorted saucily. “Wives do run away from their husbands occasionally.”
“If you ever should, as you value your life, go alone,” he answered, with sudden fierceness; and then he cooled down as quickly, and said he had not forgotten her old tricks, “there was nothing she loved better than to tease.”
“Yes; but what did you mean about my going alone?” she asked, so simply that he felt ashamed to have doubted this innocent child, even for a moment, and hastened to change the subject by speaking of his arrangements for her comfort on the morrow.
“Now, Lawrence,” she said at last, “I am not going to be carried about like a piece of rare china, in cotton wool. I am not the least delicate, and I should enjoy roughing it beyond measure, on your arm. Do let us travel sensibly, and mix with people as we go along. I want variety—even adventure—and I mean to dine at the tables d’hôte, instead of in solitary state in our own salon.”
“Under those circumstances you are likely to have the kind of adventure you will hardly care for,” he answered gravely.
“Not under your protection? With that big mustache of yours you look quite terrible, I assure you; and I often think I should be dreadfully afraid of you if I cared for you less.”