“Well, that is scarcely fair to my brother,” said Randal. He would not let this pass.
“Oh, I should judge his flirting days are over,” cried Paula, wilfully flippant. “He is as crusty as a bear with a sore head.”
“Or a sore heart,” said Randal, thinking of Adrian’s long exile, and his hard fate, ousted from his home and fortune; then he could have bitten his tongue out, realizing the sentimental significance of the words. Still one cannot play with fire without burning one’s fingers, and there are always embers among the ashes of an old flame.
For her life Paula could but look conscious with the eyes of both men on her face.
“He doesn’t seem an exponent of a sore heart.” She stumbled inexcusably in her clumsy embarrassment. There was an awkward silence. The implication that Adrian might be representative passed as untenable, and the subject of hearts was eschewed thereafter.
“Miss Dean has been quite famous as a beauty and belle in her brief career,” Mr. Floyd-Rosney deigned to contribute to the conversation.
“She is wonderfully attractive—so original and interesting,” said Ducie warmly.
“It seems to me Hilda carries her principal assets in her face,” said Mrs. Floyd-Rosney. “They say she wouldn’t learn a thing at the convent—and what is worse, she feels no lack.”
“What does any woman learn?” demanded Floyd-Rosney iconoclastically, “and what does any woman’s education signify? A mosaic of worthless smattering, expensive to acquire, and impossible to apply. Miss Dean lacks nothing in lacking this equipment.”
Paula sat affronted and indignant. In her husband’s sweeping assertion he had not had the courtesy to except her, and it was hardly admissible for Ducie to repair the omission. He could only carry the proposition further and make it general, and his tact seized the opportunity.