“Well, don’t,” she said, “for my sake.”
“For your sake?” he said, half-absently.
“Yes. Don’t you see that you would leave me alone? You would not be so cruel! And after two days only.”
“It seems about two years,” he said, grimly.
She laughed softly, her eyes still fixed on his face, as if it were a book whose pages she was reading.
“How charming the marquis is, isn’t he?”
“Charming!” he assented, with a volume of bitterness in the word.
“You must be so glad to be here with him, and it is the first time for ten years!”
“And the last for another ten,” he said, under his breath, but she heard him.
“Don’t say that. After all, he is not so bad when you know him.”