"No, I don't think I should call it fanciful, Edna," said her husband slowly.
"You think me prejudiced!" exclaimed Edna. "But indeed, Mark is very dear to me, and for his sake—and for womanhood's sake—I can't bear that the—the delicate bloom should be brushed from any token connected with his sister's wedding."
"Then you had better arrange to have a bonfire of the remaining copies of 'Why, Ben! A Story of the Sexes,'" imperturbably replied her husband.
Julian had for so long been in the habit of protecting himself against those peculiar shafts that are only launched by really and professedly good women, with indifferent satire, that the small, cheap fleer came almost automatically to his lips. It certainly interfered not at all with his intimate realisation that Lady Rossiter could hardly have chosen a worse moment for an endeavour to enlist his sympathies on her side in the indirect contest that she had elected to wage against Miss Marchrose.
"I would sooner make the presentation myself, absurd though it would be, than feel that she was making it."
"It would, however, as you say, be absurd," replied Sir Julian coldly. "Of course, it must be made by a representative of the College staff. Fairfax Fuller is the proper person."
"The misogynist!"
Sir Julian wondered, not for the first time, why his wife clung so persistently to the libel attached by her to Mr. Fuller, and came to his habitual conclusion, that she had found it necessary to her self-respect to deduce a wholesale hatred of the female sex from the Supervisor's taciturn reception of her own advances.
"I will talk to Mr. Fuller, Julian, and see what can be arranged. I thought of going in one afternoon next week. There is not too much time for arranging details now. The wedding is to-day fortnight."
"I hadn't realised it was so near. However, all the better. It'll be over the sooner, and Iris can remove her Douglas from hence before he has time to begin talking about 'we married men.'"