"Why did you put—'To Alathea from her husband' on the bracelets? You are 'Sir Nicholas' and not my husband."
"It was a bêtise, a slip of the pen; I admit you are right," and indifferently I opened Coralie's effusion, smiling over it. I put up my hand as if to shade my eye, and looked at Alathea through the fingers. She was watching me with an expression of slightly anxious interest. I could almost have believed that she was jealous!
I removed my hand and appeared only to be intent upon Coralie's letter.
"Perhaps we each have friends which might bore the other, so when you want to have parties tell me, and I will arrange to go out, and when I want to, I will tell you. In that way we can never have any jars."
"Thank you, but I have no friends except the Duchesse, or very humble people who don't want to come to parties."
"But you will be making plenty of new friends now. I have some which you will meet out in the world which I daresay you won't care about, and some who come and dine with me sometimes, who probably you would dislike."
"Yes,—I know."
"How do you know?" I asked innocently, affecting surprise.
"I used to hear them when I was typing."