"Oh, yes, Mama, but I'm not. I used to practice trying to be for months and months, just as I am practising for Seymour now. La, la, what a world!"
Nadine paused a moment.
"Of course I've quite stopped practising being in love with Hugh since I was engaged to Seymour," she said with an air of the most candid virtue. "That would be cheating."
Nadine got up looking like a tall white lily.
"Seymour is so good for me," she said. "He doesn't think much of my brain, you know, and I used to think a good deal of it. He doesn't say I'm stupid, but he hasn't got the smallest respect for my mind. I am not sure whether he is right, but I expect seeing so much of Hugh made me think I was clever. I wonder if being in love makes people stupid. He himself seems to me to be not quite so subtle as he was, and perhaps it's my fault. What do you think, Mama?"
[CHAPTER IX]
It was the morning after Christmas Day, and Dodo and Jack had just driven off from Meering on their way to Winston, where a shooting-party was to assemble that day, leaving behind them a party that regretted their departure, but did not mean to repine. Edith Arbuthnot had promised to arrive two days before, to take over from Dodo the duty of chaperone, but she had not yet come, nor had anything whatever been heard of her.
"Which shows," said Berts lucidly, "that nothing unpleasant can have happened to mother, or we should have heard."