"How do you know that we are confidential, then?" asked Jim.
"Why, of course you are; there isn't time to be confidential during the day. Besides, that is the only time when you are sure not to be invaded by women. I shall hide in the smoking-room some night and listen to what you say."
"There is nothing you might not hear," said her husband.
"You mean that, I suppose, in order to deter me from listening, assuming that, being a woman, I only care to hear what is not meant for my ears. But you said it very politely."
"Not at all; it was a formal invitation," said he, "an assurance of how entirely welcome you would be."
"Thanks. Of course you and I are under a sort of mutual compact to delight in each other's society at any time or place."
Lord Hayes laughed.
"One eternal honeymoon. Surely the golden age will return."
Jim Armine, not unnaturally, felt that this was distinctly a comedy à deux, and that the presence of a third person was unnecessary. But no man can leave his red mullet half eaten for such reasons. Everything goes to the wall before our material needs.
Lord Hayes's punctilious little manner always vanished in anything like a scene. He began to be self-possessed at exactly that point when most self-possessed people begin to be nervous and flurried, for his punctiliousness was the result not of nervousness, but a desire not to be nervous, and when the occasion was interesting enough to allow him to forget this, his tinge of finished cynicism and indifference to his fellow men assumed its natural predominance. He rather enjoyed a little polite sparring match with his wife, until he began to get the worst of it; as long as the buttons were on the foils he could fence very decently, but the sight of the bare point distinctly discomposed him.