"I don't doubt him," says Dicky Browne. "So should I, if I got the chance."
Sir Mark shrugs his shoulders; there isn't much to be got out of Dicky.
"That goes without telling," he says; "you are always prowling around after her, for no reason that I can see. But you haven't grasped my idea, he—he's in love with her, and you aren't, I suppose?"
"I don't see why you should suppose anything of the kind," says Dicky, bitterly aggrieved because of the word "prowling." "I can be as much in love with her as another, can't I, if I like? In fact," valiantly, "I think I am in love with her."
"Oh, you be hanged!" says Sir Mark, forcibly, if vulgarly, turning away from him in high disgust.
"Well, you needn't cut up so rough about nothing," says Dicky, following him. "He has had his chance of being alone with her, now, hasn't he? and see the result."
And when Sir Mark turns his eyes in the direction where Portia sits, lo! he finds Fabian gone, and Miss Vibart sitting silent and motionless as a statue, and as pale and cold as one, with a look of fixed determination in her beautiful eyes, that yet hardly hides the touch of anguish that lies beneath.
Meantime Dulce and Roger are sparring covertly, but decidedly, while Julia, who never sees anything, is fostering the dispute by unmeant, but most ill judging remarks. Stephen Gower has gone away from them to have a cigarette in the shrubberies.
Sir Mark and Dicky Browne are carrying on an argument, that in all human probability will last their time.
"I can't bear Mrs. Mildmay," says Dulce, apropos of nothing. Mrs. Mildmay is the Rector's wife, and a great friend of Roger's.