'Nervous,' she frowned. 'Why nervous?'
'I'm always afraid you'll have some news for me.'
'What news?'
'Oh, the usual thing. That a pleasant friendship is going to be interrupted if not broken by some one's carrying you off. It would be a pity, you know.'
'Then you don't agree with Lord John.'
'Oh, I suppose you ought to marry,' he said, with smiling impatience, 'and I'm very sure you will! But I shan't like it'—he wound up with an odd little laugh—'and neither will you.'
'It's an experiment I shall never try.'
He smiled, but as he glanced at her he grew grave. 'I've heard more than one young woman say that, but you look as if it might really be so.'
'It is so.'
He waited, and then, switching at the wild hyacinths with his stick—