“You are distressing me terribly,” Dominey confessed, “but all the same, after a somewhat agitated evening I must admit that I find it pleasant to talk with some one who is not wielding the lightnings. May I have a whisky and soda?”
“Bring me one, too, please,” Caroline begged. “I fear that it will seriously impair the note which I had intended to strike in our conversation, but I am thirsty. And a handful of those Turkish cigarettes, too. You can devote yourself to me with a perfectly clear conscience. Your most distinguished guest has found a task after his own heart. He has got Henry in a corner of the billiard-room and is trying to convince him of what I am sure the dear man really believes himself—that Germany's intentions towards England are of a particularly dove-like nature. Your Right Honourable guest has gone to bed, and Eddy Pelham is playing billiards with Mr. Mangan. Every one is happy. You can devote yourself to soothing my wounded vanity, to say nothing of my broken heart.”
“Always gibing at me,” Dominey grumbled.
“Not always,” she answered quietly, raising her eyes for a moment. “There was a time, Everard, before that terrible tragedy—the last time you stayed at Dunratter—when I didn't gibe.”
“When, on the contrary, you were sweetness itself,” he reflected.
She sighed reminiscently.
“That was a wonderful month,” she murmured. “I think it was then for the first time that I saw traces of something in you which I suppose accounts for your being what you are to-day.”
“You think that I have changed, then?”
She looked him in the eyes.
“I sometimes find it difficult to believe,” she admitted, “that you are the same man.”