“We will abandon the discussion then, if you will,” Wolfenden said slowly. “I will talk with Lady Deringham again. She is in an extremely nervous state; it is possible of course that she may have misunderstood you.”
Mr. Sabin sighed with an air of gentle relief. Ah! if the men of other countries were only as easy to delude as these Englishmen! What a triumphant career might yet be his!
“I am very glad,” he said, “that you do me the honour to take, what I can assure you, is the correct view of the situation. I hope that you will not hurry away; may I not offer you a cigarette?”
Wolfenden sat down for the first time.
“Are you in earnest,” he asked, “when you speak of leaving England so soon?”
“Assuredly! You will do me the justice to admit that I have never pretended to like your country, have I? I hope to leave it for several years, if not for ever, within the course of a few weeks.”
“And your niece, Mr. Sabin?”
“She accompanies me, of course; she likes this country even less than I do. Perhaps, under the circumstances, our departure is the best thing that could happen; it is at any rate opportune.”
“I cannot agree with you,” Wolfenden said; “for me it is most inopportune. I need scarcely say that I have not abandoned my desire to make your niece my wife.”
“I should have thought,” Mr. Sabin said, with a fine note of satire in his tone, “that you would have put far away from you all idea of any connection with such suspicious personages.”