Kennedy, reading her like a book, nobly suppresses a wild desire for laughter, and goes on in a tone, if possible, more depressed than the former one.
"My insane hope was the doll," he says: "it proved only dust. I haven't got over the shock yet that I felt on hearing of your marriage. I don't suppose I ever shall now."
"Nonsense!" says Georgie, contemptuously. "I never saw you look so well in all my life. You are positively fat."
"That's how it always shows with me," says Kennedy, unblushingly. "Whenever green and yellow melancholy marks me for its own, I sit on a monument (they always keep one for me at home) and smile incessantly at grief, and get as fat as possible. It is a refinement of cruelty, you know, as superfluous flesh is not a thing to be hankered after."
"How you must have fretted," says Mrs. Branscombe, demurely, glancing from under her long lashes at his figure, which has certainly gained both in size and in weight since their last meeting.
At this they both laugh.
"Is your husband here to-day?" asks he, presently.
"Yes."
"Why isn't he with you?"
"He has found somebody more to his fancy, perhaps."