"Oh, you take a great risk," she said. "Who is to assure you that I shan't disappoint you, disappoint you horribly? I can't assure you of that, Jack. It is easy to understand other people, but the silly proverb that tells you to know yourself, makes a far more difficult demand. If I disappoint you, what are we to do?"
"You can't disappoint me if you are yourself," he said.
"You say that! To me, too, who have outraged every sort of decency with regard to you?"
He was silent a moment.
"Yes, I say that to you," he said.
Dodo gave a little bubbling laugh.
"You are not very polite," she said. "I say that I have outraged every sort of decency and you don't even contradict me."
"No. What you say is—is perfectly true. But the comment of you and me sitting here on our bridal night is sufficient, is it not? Dodo, there is no use in your calling yourself names. Leave it all alone: we are here, you and I. And it is getting late, my darling."
The same night Lady Ayr was giving one of her awful dinner-parties. Her family, John, Esther and Seymour were always bidden to them, and went in to dinner in exactly their proper places as sons and daughters of a marquis. Before now it had happened that Seymour had to take Esther in to dinner, and it was so to-night. But in the general way they saw so little of each other, that they did not very much object. They usually quarreled before long, but made their differences up again by their unanimity of opinion about their mother. That had already happened this evening.