"That sounds rather a dismal little chronicle, Lizzy," he said. "So if you feel that we can't talk while I go on gardening——"
"It has nothing to do with my feelings," remarked Elizabeth; "it is a mere question of external impossibilities. Have you had tea?"
"Yes."
"Then come and see me have mine. I shall eat quantities and quantities of tea, and not have any dinner, I think. One can't dine alone, and you and mamma are dining out at the Residency and going to the dance. Daddy, I do think mamma might have let me go to the ball; I'm eighteen, and if one isn't old enough to go to a dance at eighteen, I don't know when one is."
Elizabeth paused a moment, and put her nose in the air.
"I don't believe mamma will want me to come out till it is time for me to go in again," she remarked.
Colonel Fanshawe had an admirable gift of silence. When he concluded that there was no advantage to be gained by speech he could refrain from it, instead of, like the most part of mankind, making a series of injudicious observations. At the bottom of Elizabeth's remark, as he well knew, there lay stewing a herb of rather bitter infusion, which he had no desire to stir up. But Elizabeth, so it seemed, felt disposed to do the stirring herself.
"Mamma will have the next eight months all to herself," she said, "and she can dance all the time. I wish to state quite explicitly that I think she might have let me go to this dance. I have told her so, and so for fear she should tell you, I do it myself."
Elizabeth's eye wandered on to the path, and she broke off suddenly.
"Oh, my beloved Shah Jehan," she said, "you will certainly strangle yourself."