"Pauline, you villain, it's the beginning of Margaret's face!"
She clapped her hands.
"Oh, Richard, aren't I a villain? But, you know, it's not very frightfully like anything, is it?"
"Pauline," he said suddenly in that sharp voice in which two years ago he had entrusted his interests to her before he went away. "Pauline, is Margaret going to marry me?"
"Why, of course she is, Richard."
"Has she spoken to you about me?"
"But you know she never speaks about her own affairs and that she can't bear anybody else to speak of them to her."
"Then how do you know?" he asked.
"Well, perhaps because I'm so much in love with Guy," Pauline whispered.
"I don't see how that quite works. I'm a very dull sort of a chap after that Guy of yours."