"It is absurd," says Perpetua coldly. There is evidently no pity in her. And alas! when we think what that sweet feeling is akin to, on the highest authority, one's hopes for Hardinge fall low. He loses his head a little.
"Not so absurd as your guardian's, however," says he, feeling the necessity for saying something without the power to manufacture it.
"Mr. Curzon's? What is his name?" asks she, rising out of her lounging position and looking, for the first time, interested.
"Thaddeus."
Perpetua, after a prolonged stare, laughs a little.
"What a name!" says she. "Worse than mine. And yet," still laughing, "it suits him, I think."
Hardinge laughs with her. Not at his friend, but with her. It seems clear to him that Perpetua is making gentle fun of her guardian, and though his conscience smites him for encouraging her in her naughtiness, still he cannot refrain.
"He is an awfully good old fellow," says he, throwing a sop to his Cerberus.
"Is he?" says Perpetua, as if even more amused. She looks up at him, and then down again, and trifles with the fan she has taken back from him, and finally laughs again; something in her laugh this time, however, puzzles him.
"You don't like him?" hazards he. "After all, I suppose it is hardly natural that a ward should like her guardian."