"Laugh?" cried Lady Oxted. "Who talked of laughing? Of course, if Evie chooses to marry a man with unmistakable signs of incipient mania, and Mrs. Aylwin doesn't object, it's her own affair. But I wish I was her mother."
"Yes, that would be something," said Harry, in a tone of extreme indulgence. "It would be charming for you, as you can't be her husband. Poor aunt!"
"Thirty love," said Geoffrey.
Lady Oxted gathered up her card case and parasol.
"You just wait, my boy, till I get you to Oxted," she said truculently.
"Is Geoff going to Oxted?" asked Harry, throwing himself extravagantly on the sofa by him. "Geoff, Geoff, would you leave me alone, alone in London, like Jessica's first prayer? I will follow you, if it be on foot and begging my bread. I can not live without you. See Wilson Barrett," he explained, sitting upright again, and smoothing his tumbled hair.
Lady Oxted shrugged her shoulders, and shook a despairing head.
"Poor Evie!" she said. "Poor, dear Evie!"
Harry sprang up and stood with his back to the door.
"Now why 'Poor Evie'?" he asked. "Explain precisely why. You don't leave the room until you have explained."