Kit had a brilliant idea. She saw that Toby wanted to talk about it, so she determined not to talk, but to leave in him a little barbed shaft that might do useful work.
"We'll not talk about it, Toby," she said; "I can see you don't want to. Probably you are not in love at all, just a bit attracted. Get over it as quick as you can, there's a good boy; it makes you unsocial and distrait. Besides, how often has she seen you? With all your excellent qualities, dear Toby, you are not exactly—well, anything more than quite a poor, pleasant, plain young man. So drop the whole thing; you will neither break your heart nor hers. I have made too much of it, no doubt. I was wrong, I feel sure I was wrong, and I beg your pardon. Oh, there has been a hurricane in Florida! How too terrible!" And she buried herself again behind her paper.
Toby gave a short preoccupied grunt, and subsided into his corner, frowning angrily at the innocent features of the landscape. With all his native modesty and candour, he was not quite of Kit's way of thinking. The lover's devotion, which quite honestly swears that he is not fit to be the doormat to the beloved's boots, sees all the time that there is another possibility, and even in the ecstasy of humiliation aspires to worthier offices. Even while he swears himself a doormat, yet with a magnificent inconsistence he lifts his eyes higher than her boots. Though Toby was all that those tame reptilia, who think that every woman they meet is in love with them, are not, yet he did not at all accept Kit's suggestion that Lily could not conceivably have anything to say to him. With perfect sincerity he would say he was not worthy, but he was not at all content to have it said for him. Even more absurd was her suggestion that he was not in love himself. Distrait! he should just think he was. And he glared savagely at the outside page of Kit's Pall Mall.
Just about as they went screaming and swaying through Slough, Kit laid her paper down and yawned elaborately. Through her half-closed eyes she saw Toby glowering darkly at her from the seat opposite, and waited with amused satisfaction the working of her darts.
"Nothing in the paper," she said.
"I thought there was a famine in Florida," he observed dryly.
Kit regarded him for a moment in irritating silence.
"Florida is a long way off," she said at length. "Probably it is only a geographical expression. There are many places and people, Toby, much nearer than Florida."
The second link in the chain of circumstances which led to Toby's going punting in the heat was shorter. It occurred that same evening after dinner. Kit was sitting with Mrs. Murchison in the window of the hall, while the others were out on the lawn, when Lily entered, followed by Toby.
"I'm going to bed, mother," she said. "Good-night, Lady Conybeare; good-night, Lord Evelyn."