The gong went suddenly, and Margaret said that of course to-night he would stay to dinner.
So once again he was staying to dinner, and now on such terms as would make this an occasion difficult to forget. As he waited alone in the lamplit nursery, while Margaret and Pauline were dressing, he kissed Pauline in each faded picture stuck in those gay scrap-books of Varese. Nor did he feel the least ashamed of himself, although at Oxford his cynicism had been the admiration even of Balliol, where there had been no one like him for tearing sentiment into dishonored rags. When the Rector came in to dinner, carrying with him a dusty botanical folio that swept all the glass and silver from his end of the table to huddle in the center, Guy tried to make out if he were very much depressed by his not having yet gone home.
"Dear me," said the Rector, "I was sure I had seen it in here."
"Seen what, Francis?" asked his wife.
"A plant you wouldn't know. A Cilician crocus.
"Isn't Father sweet?" said Pauline. "Because, of course, Mother never knows any plant."
"What nonsense, Pauline! Of course I know a crocus."
Towards the end of dinner Mrs. Grey said, rather nervously:
"Francis dear, wouldn't you like to drink Pauline's health?"
"Why, with pleasure," said the Rector. "Though she looks very well."