“Shall we go on?” she said.
He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes and manlike he thought she was vexed with him at his fooling.
“I haven't made you cross, have I?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she replied.
“I mean you don't believe all this rot about my being married and that sort of thing?”
“I'm not interested,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, “not very much. You've been very kind to me and I should be an awful boor if I wasn't grateful. Of course, I don't care whether you're married or not, it's nothing to do with me, is it?”
“Naturally it isn't,” he replied. “I suppose you aren't married by any chance?”
“Married,” she repeated bitterly; “why, you will make my fourth!”
She had hardy got the words out of her mouth before she realized her terrible error. A second later she was in his arms and he was kissing her to the scandal of one aged park keeper, one small and dirty-faced little boy and a moulting duck who seemed to sneer at the proceedings which he watched through a yellow and malignant eye.
“Belinda Mary,” said T. X. at parting, “you have got to give up your little country establishment, wherever it may be and come back to the discomforts of Portman Place. Oh, I know you can't come back yet. That 'somebody' is there, and I can pretty well guess who it is.”