“Right. Get on,” said Peter.
“Yes, about your gratitude. It was that night that I told you to ask Silvia to marry you. Didn’t I?”
“Yes. Thank you, dear Mrs. Beaumont,” said Peter effusively. “So good of you to tell me.”
“It was a good idea, wasn’t it?”
Nellie’s mind stiffened itself to “attention” at that moment. Before, it had been standing very much at ease.
“The best idea in the world,” he said.
“I’m awfully glad,” said she. “What you say, too, makes it all the more delightful of you to stop up in town to-night, instead of going back to her.”
Though up till now they had fitted into each other with all the old familiar smoothness, it appeared now, when they got near, in their conversation, to what had happened to each of them (not, so he still felt, altering them, but putting them into new cases) that there was fresh ground to be broken; hitherto they had only picked their way over the old ground. Nellie felt this even more imperatively than he. They had got to run the plough (so why not at once on this admirable opportunity?) through the unturned land.... Peter’s servant had already appeared in the doorway, announcing the motor, and she had noticed that, but Peter had not. She concluded from that, that he, easy as their intercourse had up till now been, was feeling some pre-occupation. His hesitation in answering her last acknowledgment of his amiability in remaining in town instead of going back to Howes, confirmed that impression. Then, before the pause was unduly prolonged, so as to amount to embarrassment, she put her word in again.
“I appreciate that,” she said, “because it shows that the new ties haven’t demolished the old. And on my side I admit, far more definitely than you, that if my poor Philip must have a cold, I am glad—ever so glad—it visited him to-night, so as to give me an evening with you.”
She swept her plate and coffee-cup aside, to make room for an advance of the elbows.