Here, as if some gay little thought has occurred to her, she lowers her head and looks at her dainty finger-nails, then up at Rylton from under half-closed lids.
"What a good thing I didn't try to startle you!" says she. "You might have fallen in love with me, too."
She waits for a second as it were, just time enough to let her see the nervous movement of his brows, and then—she laughs.
"I've escaped that bore," says she, nodding her head. She throws herself into a big chair. "And now, as the parsons say, 'to continue'; you were advising me to ask——"
"Your uncle."
All the brightness has died out of Rylton's voice; he looks dull, uninterested. That small remark of hers—what memories it has awakened! And yet—would he go back?
"Chut! What a suggestion!" says Tita, shrugging her shoulders.
"Don't you know that my one thought is to enjoy myself?"
"A great one," says he, smiling strangely.
She cares for nothing, he tells himself: nothing! He has married a mere butterfly; yet how pretty the butterfly is, lying back there in that huge armchair, her picturesque little figure flung carelessly into artistic curves, her soft, velvety head rubbing itself restlessly amongst the amber cushions. The cushions had been in one of the drawing-rooms, but she had declared he was frightfully uncomfortable in his horrid old den, and has insisted on making him a handsome present of them. She seems to him the very incarnation of exquisite idleness, the idleness that knows no thought.
"Very good," says he at last. "If you refuse to make up a list of your friends, help me to make up a list of mine. You know you said you would like to fill the house."