On this discouraging pronouncement, they were rejoined by the rest of the party.
Nevertheless Valeria contrived to enquire of Quentillian, in a disturbed murmur:
“What can Adrian be thinking of?”
It was not at all difficult to guess what Adrian could be thinking of, and became still less so as the days slipped by and his infatuation for Miss Olga Duffle led to her inclusion in innumerable games of tennis and impromptu tea-parties at St. Gwenllian.
“What can he see in her?” Valeria demanded, after the fashion of sisters.
Quentillian was unable to provide any adequate explanation of the phenomenon, but he was fully prepared to discuss it, and prolong thereby the sense of intimacy with Valeria.
It seemed to Quentillian that a new, slight, tinge of gravity shadowed Valeria’s frankness.
With all the logic and consistency of most persons so situated, Quentillian alternately viewed this as being hopeful or unhopeful, in the extreme, for the fulfilment of his wishes.
He was slightly amused at finding himself in the extremely conventional position in which he had so often viewed, with dispassionate distaste, the spectacle presented by other men, and this amusement was not without its share in determining him to submit his proposal to Valeria in writing.
A tendency, real, or fancied by Quentillian’s self-consciousness, on the parts of Flora and Adrian at least, to vacate any room in which he and Valeria might be, upon excuses of a shadow-like transparency, finally brought Quentillian to the point of leaving St. Gwenllian, under promise of an early return.