“Will you come and tell me then, Rosey? I deserve something.”
“What, for sleeping there instead of here, when you’ve nothing to do?”
“Indeed, but I have. I want to make out this little Chaucer. I shall go down to the coffee-room and do it.”
“Well, if you like poking out your eyes with the gas in the coffee-room, I have no objection, since you are too proud to go to bed. Wish him good night first, and do it naturally.”
“Nature would be thrown away on him, poor fellow,” said Terry, as he roused Frank with difficulty to have ‘Good night’ roared into his ear, and give a listless hand. He was about to deal with Rosamond in the same way, but she said—
“No, I am not going yet,” and settled herself opposite to him, with her half-knitted baby’s shoe in her hands, and her feet on the fender, her crape drawn up from the fire, disposed for conversation. Frank, on the other hand, fell back into the old position, looking so wretched that she could bear it no longer, picked up the tube, forced it on him, and said, “Do tell me, dear Frank. You used to tell me long ago.”
He shook his head. “That’s all over. You are very good, Rosamond, but you should not have forced her to come to me.”
“Not!”
“My life was not worth saving.”
“She has not gone back from you again?—the horrible girl!” (this last aside).