She thought that Winn was rather coarse, but he wasn’t as coarse as that!
Estelle had a great deal that she wanted to talk over about the wedding. The whole occasion flamed out at her — a perfect project, perfectly carried out. She explained to Winn at length who everybody was and how there had been some people there who had had to be taken down, and others who had had to be pushed forward, and her mother explained to, and her father checked, and the children (it was too dreadful how they’d let Bobby run after Winn), kept as much out of the way as possible.
Winn listened hard and tried to follow intelligently all the family histories she evolved for him. At last after a rather prolonged pause on his part, just at a point when he should have expressed admiration of her guidance of a delicate affair, Estelle glanced at him and discovered that he was asleep! They hadn’t been married for three hours, and he could go to sleep in the middle of their first real talk! She was sure Lionel Drummond wouldn’t have done any such thing. But Winn was old — he was thirty-five — and she could see quite plainly now that the hair round the tops of his ears was gray. She looked at him scornfully, but he didn’t wake up.
When he woke up he laughed.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I believe I’ve been to sleep!” but he didn’t apologize. He began instead to tell her some things that might interest her, about what Drummond, his best man, and he, had done in Manchuria, just as if nothing had happened; but naturally Estelle wouldn’t be interested. She was first polite, then bored, then captious. Winn looked at her rather hard. “Are you trying to pay me back for falling asleep?” he asked with a queer little laugh. “Is that what you’re up to?” Estelle stiffened.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I simply wasn’t very interested. I don’t think I like Chinese stories, and Manchuria is just the same, of course.”
Winn leaned over her, with a wicked light in his eyes, like a naughty school boy. “Own up!” he said, laying his rough hand very gently on her shoulder. “Own up, old lady!”
But has anybody ever owned up when they were being spiteful?
Estelle didn’t. She looked at Winn’s hand till he withdrew it, and then she remarked that she was feeling faint from want of food.
After she had had seven chicken sandwiches, pâté de foie gras, half a melon, and some champagne, she began to be agreeable.