"Yes," said Lily with more of emphasis in her tone than was habitual to her.
"Oh yes, worth it over and over again for the man one loved."
"You little dear!" cried Nicholas exuberantly.
She realized with a violent shock, as he caught her in his arms, that her thoughts had been of some visionary abstraction, and not at all of Nicholas Aubray.
XV
Something which could hardly be called a reconciliation, but which was gracefully apostrophized by Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe as a rapprochement, took place between Philip and his sister after Lily's marriage.
Philip would neither admit that they had ever been estranged, nor that the undoubted fact that Lily owed her acquaintance with Nicholas Aubray to her aunt, was in any way connected with their renewal of intercourse.
It needed Miss Stellenthorpe to carry off the situation with what she would herself certainly have described as désinvolture.
"My good, my excellent Philip!" she cried in tones of patronage. "Well did I know that you could not persist in your undignified sulks for ever. It was more than time that you and I met again."