“Well, I’m sure I should find it dismal enough at home,” he said, “if I hadn’t somewhere to go to, knowing I should find a welcome. Mind you, I don’t blame Amy. For years now, when we’ve been alone in the evening, she has done her work, and I have read the paper, and I daresay we haven’t said a dozen words till Parker brought in the bedroom candles, or sometimes we play picquet—for love. But now evenings spent like that seem to me very prosy and dismal. Perhaps it’s Harrogate that has made me a bit more supple and youthful, though I’m sure it’s ridiculous enough that a tough old campaigner like me should feel such things——”
Mrs. Evans put forward her chin, raising her face towards him.
“But why ridiculous?” she asked. “You must be so much younger than dear Cousin Amy. I wonder—I wonder if she feels that too?”
There was there a very devilish suggestion, the more so because, in proportion to the suggestion, so very little was stated. It succeeded admirably.
“Poor dear Amy!” said he.
He had said that once before, when Cleopatra-Amy was contrasted with Cleopatra-Millie. But there was a significance in the repetition of it. Once the assumed identity of character had suggested the comment, now there was no assumed character. It concerned Millie and Amy themselves.
“I am sure Cousin Amy ought to be very happy,” she said softly. “You are so devoted to her, and all. I almost think you spoil her, Lyndhurst. It is all so romantic. Fancy being a woman, and as old as Cousin Amy, and yet having a young man so devoted. Harry, too!”
Again a billow of confidence tinged with self-appreciation surged over Major Ames. After all, his wife was much older than him, for he was still a young man, and his youth was being expanded on sweet-peas and the garden roller. And he was stirred into a high flight of philosophical conjecture.
“My God, what a puzzle life is!” he observed.