"No; do you first tell me how you have been enjoying yourself. Were 'your people,' as you call them, very glad to see you; and did they make much of you, as in duty bound?"
There was, whether intentionally or not, a slight inflection of sarcasm in her tone which jarred upon Paul's nerves.
"They were very glad to see me, and made much of me in the only way parents can do," said he quietly. "I often think how foolishly, worse than foolishly, we behave while we have them with us, and only recognise our proper duty to them when it is too late."
"Ye-es," said Daisy, struggling to repress a yawn. She was thinking of something else very different from filial duty, and was beginning to be bored.
"You do not seem to enter into those sentiments," said Paul; "but that is because you have no parents."
"Perhaps so," said the girl; "but even if I had, I scarcely think I should be tempted to gush; gushing is very much out of my line."
Paul looked at her strangely. He had never heard her so hard, so cold, so sardonic before.
"No," he said, after a moment's pause; "you generally manage to have a wonderful control of your feelings; it only needed one to look through your recent letters to prove that."
"What was the matter with my letters?" said Daisy, looking up at him so bewitchingly at that moment that all Paul's anger vanished.
"The matter with them! Nothing, my darling, except that I thought they were a little cold; but perhaps that was my fault."