“I think,” said Quentillian with dignity, “that perhaps you forget it was only a few hours ago that I learnt how completely cheated and—fooled, I have been.”
He could not avoid a recollection that the Canon would not have needed such a reminder.
“Indeed, I don’t forget at all,” said Lucilla earnestly. “It must be very vexing for you, but—Owen, do forgive me for saying that I can’t really feel as if you minded dreadfully. You’re much too understanding, really, not to know that poor Val didn’t wilfully cheat you, any more than she cheated herself. And I think you, too, perhaps, in another way, were beginning to feel that you’d made a mistake in promising to marry one another.”
Lucilla, Quentillian realized half ruefully and half with amusement, had beaten him at his own game. Her unvarnished appraisement of the situation brought to it no more and no less than the facts warranted.
His answering gaze was as straight as her own.
“You’re right,” he said abruptly.
She held out her hand with a laden plate in it.
“Pudding?” she enquired, prosaically.
“Thanks.”
He made an excellent dinner.