“Are you Sylvia’s servant?” said Michael, in exasperation.
“Don’t be stupid. Of course not.”
“It’s ridiculous,” he grumbled, “to quote her with every sentence.”
“Why you couldn’t have stayed where you were,” said Lily fretfully, “I don’t know. It was lovely sitting by the fire and being kissed. If you’re so much in love with me, I wonder you wanted to get up.”
“So, we’re not to talk any more about marriage?”
After all, he told himself, it was unreasonable of him to suppose that Lily was likely to be as impulsive as himself. Her temperament was not the same. She did not mean to discourage him.
“Don’t let’s talk about anything,” said Lily. He could not stand aloof from the arms she held wide open.
Sylvia would not be coming back for at least three days, and Michael spent all his time with Lily. He thought that Mrs. Gainsborough looked approvingly upon their love; at any rate, she never worried them. The weather was steadily unpleasant, and though he took Lily out to lunch, it never seemed worth while to stay away from Tinderbox Lane very long. One night, however, they went to the Palace, and afterward, when he asked her where she would like to go, she suggested Verrey’s. Michael had never been there before, and he was rather jealous that Lily should seem to know it so well. However, he liked to see her sitting in what he told himself was the only café in London which had escaped the cheapening of popularity and had kept its old air of the Third Empire.
As Lily was stirring her lemon-squash, her languid forearm looked very white swaying from the somber mufflings of her cloak. Something in her self-possession, a momentary hardness and disdain, made Michael suddenly suspicious.
“Do you enjoy Covent Garden balls?” he asked.