"How stupid Guy is!" she says. "I wonder it never occurs to him to invent a new excuse: whenever he wants to avoid doing anything unpleasant to him, he has always some pressing business connected with the stables to take him away. Have you noticed it?"
"I cannot say I have. But then I have not made a point of studying his eccentricities. Now you have told me this one, I dare say I shall remark it in future. You see," with a slight smile, "I hold myself in such good esteem that it never occurred to me others might find my company disagreeable."
"Nor do they, I am sure,"—politely,—"but Guy is so peculiar, at times positively odd."
"You amaze me more and more every moment. I have always considered him quite a rational being,—not in the least madder than the rest of us. I do hope the new moon will have no effect upon him."
"Ah! you jest," languidly. "But Guy does hold strange opinions, especially about women. No one, I think, quite understands him but me. We have always been so—fond of each other, he and I."
"Yes? Quite like brother and sister, I suppose? It is only natural."
"Oh, no" emphatically, her voice taking a soft intonation full of sentimental meaning, "not in the very least like brother and sister."
"Like what then?" asks Lilian, somewhat sharply for her.
"How downright you are!" with a little forced laugh, and a modest drooping of her white lids; "I mean, I think a brother and sister are hardly so necessary to each other's happiness as—as we are to each other, and have been for years. To me, Chetwoode would not be Chetwoode without Guy, and I fancy—I am sure—it would scarcely be home to Guy without me." This with a quiet conviction not to be shaken. "Perhaps you can see what I mean? though, indeed," with a smile, "I hardly know myself what it is I do mean."
"Ah!" says Lilian, a world of meaning in her tone.