"Oh, be quiet!" said Lady St. Craye. "I never knew myself so tiresome before. I think I must be going to be ill. My head feels like an ice in an omelette."
Vernon, strolling in much later, found her with eyes closed, leaning back among her flowers as she had lain all that long afternoon.
"How pale you look," he said. "You ought to get away from here."
"Yes," she said, "I suppose I ought. It would be easier for you if you hadn't the awful responsibility of bringing me roses every other day. What beauty-darlings these are!" She dipped her face in the fresh pure whiteness of the ones he had laid on her knee. Their faces felt cold, like the faces of dead people. She shivered.
"Heaven knows what I should do without you to—to bring my—my roses to," he said.
"Do you bring me anything else to-day?" she roused herself to ask. "Any news, for instance?"
"No," he said. "There isn't any news—there never will be. She's gone home—I'm certain of it. Next week I shall go over to England and propose for her formally to her step-father."
"A very proper course!"
It was odd that talking to some one else should make one's head throb like this. And it was so difficult to know what to say. Very odd. It had been much easier to talk to the Inward Monitor.
She made herself say: "And suppose she isn't there?" She thought she said it rather well.