She felt ungrateful because she wished that he would give her the opinion she had asked for instead of caressing her.
The next moment he did so.
"Yes, I think she's quite nice-looking. She's got plenty of brains, too, hasn't she?"
His tone took an affirmative reply for granted, and Lily gave it because she was afraid that it would sound ungenerous to express the opinion that Dorothy was emphatically devoid of brains.
She reflected, besides, that Nicholas was more likely to be a competent judge of brains than she was herself.
Lily was always willing to tell herself that the judgments of Nicholas were more to be trusted than were her own. She liked to acknowledge to herself his superiority, believing that because she acknowledged it, she relied upon it.
But in the recesses of her soul, into which she had been taught to shun investigation, her own intuitions and convictions remained unaltered.
"Where are they going to live? In India?" Nicholas enquired.
His absorption in any matter under discussion was always cordial and unfeigned, and always came as a joyful surprise to Lily, accustomed to Philip's elaborately polite pretences at an interest which he in reality seldom felt in the affairs of other people.
"I suppose they'll live in India," she said. "I don't know how many more years of foreign service he has, but he's only twenty-eight. Dorothy says something about living in bungalows and places."