"Did you give our friend Spaghetti his marching orders?" Nicholas made enquiry of her, his eyebrows raised in a significantly humorous expression.
"I don't know that I did, exactly. He gave them to himself, I think."
"I thought he seemed a bit infatuated," said Nicholas complacently.
"Would you be angry if I told you that I—I did encourage him a little bit?"
Nicholas roared with laughter.
His mirth was so spontaneous and so ludicrously inapposite to Lily's own half-formed intention of making as sensational a confession as the mildness of the facts allowed, that she could not help laughing with him.
"But, Nicholas, I really am ashamed."
"Why, darling?"
He put his arm round her waist.
"Because one evening he—he told me I wasn't happy and I said it was true."