Nolly is especially and oppressively cheerful. He is blind to the depression that marks Mona and Geoffrey for its own, and quite outdoes himself in geniality and all-round amiability.
Violet has gone to the stables to bestow upon her bonny brown mare her usual morning offering of bread; Jack, of course, has gone with her.
Geoffrey is nowhere just at this moment. Doatie and Nicholas are sitting hand in hand and side by side in the library, discussing their own cruel case, and wondering for the thousandth time whether—if the worst comes to the worst (of which, alas! there now seems little doubt)—her father will still give his consent to their marriage, and, if so, how they shall manage to live on five hundred pounds a year, and whether it may not be possible for Nicholas to get something or other to do (on this subject they are vague) that may help "to make the crown a pound."
Mona is sitting in the morning-room, the faithful and ever lively Nolly at her side. According to his lights, she is "worth a ship-load of the whole lot," and as such he haunts her. But to-day she fails him. She is absent, depressed, weighed down with thought,—anything but congenial. She forgets to smile in the right place, says, "Yes" when courtesy requires "No," and is deaf to his gayest sallies.
When he has told her a really good story.—quite true, and all about the æsthetic, Lady Lilias, who has declared her intention of calling this afternoon, and against whose wearing society he is strenuously warning her,—and when she has shown no appreciation of the wit contained therein, he knows there is something—as he himself describes it—"rotten in the state of Denmark."
"You are not well, are you, Mrs. Geoffrey?" he says, sympathetically, getting up from his own chair to lean tenderly over the back of hers. Nolly is nothing if not affectionate, where women are concerned. It gives him no thought or trouble to be attentive to them, as in his soul he loves them all,—in the abstract,—from the dairymaid to the duchess, always provided they are pretty.
"You are wrong: I am quite well," says Mona, smiling, and rousing herself.
"Then you have something on your mind. You have not been your usual perfect self all the morning."
"I slept badly last night; I hardly slept at all," she says, plaintively, evading direct reply.
"Oh, well, that's it," says Mr. Darling, somewhat relieved. "I'm an awful duffer not to have guessed that Geoffrey's being out would keep you awake."