"He is a great friend of Eva's," said her husband, watching her. "Why hasn't he come to see you to-day, Eva?"
"Chiefly because he left by the mail for Aix this morning," said Eva. "He asked me to say good-bye to you for him."
Lord Hayes had the satisfaction of believing this to be untrue, but that was small compared with the complete failure on his part to ruffle Eva's bosom with an uneven breath, or raise the slightest tinge of colour to her face.
"I'm quite in love with him," she went on slowly, without looking at her husband. "I feel quite desolate without him. Hayes, you must be particularly kind to me all day. Though, of course, you mustn't hope to compete with Reggie in my affections."
Lord Hayes smiled, and took some jelly. Most people know that particular moment experienced at varying distances from Dover pier, when they are not quite sure whether they enjoy the motion or not. Lord Hayes was, metaphorically speaking, being a little tossed about, and if he did not yet think with longing of terra firma, he was not sorry to remember that he would be alone at Trelso that evening.
"What a beautiful thing it is, is it not," he said, addressing Mrs. Grampound, "when a wife reposes such confidence in her husband, that she tells him she is in love with someone else. Truly there can be no secrets between such."
Mrs. Grampound tittered shrilly. To state the truth, as Eva had done, is often the surest, sometimes the only, way of producing a complete misconception. She failed to notice the acidity in Lord Hayes's face and voice, and thought the scene quite too charming. But Percy noticed and wondered.
"What shocking things to say to each other," cried she. "Eva, you naughty child, how can you? And you deserve I should scold you too," she said, turning to her son-in-law.
"Reggie has scorned me and my homage altogether," continued Eva gravely, speaking chiefly in order to produce a sort of counter-irritant to her own pain, on the same principle as that on which children, suffering from toothache, may be observed to bite their lips. "He has gone off to Aix to see his fiancée. He gave me her photograph—wasn't that a cruel thing to do?—and his own. Really, it was most shameless. I was never so humiliated before. I think, when Hayes goes away to Trelso, I shall take the train to Aix and sit watching the hotel windows, and serenade him in the hotel garden. It's quite a new idea for a woman to serenade her lover. Why did you never serenade me, Hayes? I should like to see you serenade on a cold night under a silk umbrella. Can you sing, by the way? You'd have to leave a good deal to the lute, like the man in Browning who serenaded at a villa during a thunderstorm. Your mother wouldn't approve of serenading, would she? The evening fever sets in about that time, I think, from eleven till two—of course, the damp wouldn't matter if you had Jaeger boots with eight holes in them."
"Eva, you naughty girl," said her mother again.