I listen to Sir Mark's clever, airy little oration that makes everybody laugh, especially Miss De Vere, and wonder to myself that I too can laugh.
Billy—who has managed to get close up to me—keeps on helping me indefatigably to champagne, under the mistaken impression he is doing me a last service. I catch mamma's sad eyes fixed upon me from the opposite side, and then I know I am going to cry again, and, rising from the table, get away in safety to my own room, whither I am followed by her, and we say our few final, farewell words in private.
Three hours later I have embraced mother for the last time, and am speeding away from home and friends and childhood to I know not what.
CHAPTER XVII
We have been married nearly three months, and are going on very comfortably. As yet no cross or angry words have arisen between us; all is smooth as unruffled waters. Though Marmaduke is, if anything, fonder of me than at first, he is perhaps a shade less slavishly attentive. For example, he can now enjoy his Times at breakfast and read it straight through without raising his eyes between every paragraph, to make sure I am still behind the teapot and have not vanished into mid air, or to ask me tenderly if I would wish to do this or care to go there.
He has also learned—which is more satisfactory still—that it is possible to know enjoyment even when I am out of sight.
Two months of delicious thoughtless idleness we spend in Spain and Switzerland, and then—we pine for home. This latter secretly, and with a sworn determination that each will be the last to confess it.
One calm glorious evening, however, after dinner, as I stand at the window of our hotel, gazing over the Lake of Geneva, something within me compels the following speech:
"How beautiful Strangemore must be looking now!"—-
I feel slightly doubtful of the wisdom of my words when they were uttered, and would have recalled them; but the encouraging amiability with which Marmaduke receives my remark speedily reassures me.