He raised his eyebrows slightly, as though wishing to show her that he was surprised at the question.
"You're not vexed with me, are you?"
"I could never be vexed with you, darling," he said, speaking more naturally.
Later, he returned to the subject of his own accord.
"What made my little wife think I could be vexed with her? So long as you don't feel that I'm an elderly fellow who had no business to marry a pretty little girl out of the nursery. Is that it, eh, Lily?"
He laughed as he spoke but there was a kind of nervous anxiety in the look that he turned upon her.
"Of course I don't, Nicholas!"
She raised her lips to his quickly, partly in order to hide the understanding that she felt had leapt into her face.
She saw that Nicholas was sensitive upon the subject of his age. He had found, in Lily's regret at the loss of her old playmate, an implied allusion to the years that separated him from his wife.
It had hurt his feelings.