“Yes, I thought you had dined with some friend, and then had gone with him to see Lucia di’ Lammermoor. Had you not?”
“No, my darling, no; I wouldn’t have left you alone all the evening, for the sake of hearing the grandest opera ever written and played.”
“Wouldn’t you, Alick? But you might have done so. I shouldn’t have thought hard of it. I couldn’t expect you to be tied down to me all the time.”
“But, my darling, I wouldn’t have, broken faith with you and stayed away, when I promised to be home, for any amusement under the sun. And nothing but the most urgent necessity should have kept me away on this occasion.”
“Dear Alick, nothing disagreeable to you, I hope?”
“Only disagreeable, love, in so far as it detained me from your side.”
“Then I am glad.”
“It was only—some unexpected business connected with my late father’s will,” said Alexander, hesitatingly, and again speaking a literal truth to give a false impression. For certainly his embarrassments with Anna Lyon did grow out of his father’s will—will that he, Alexander, should marry her.
But Drusilla understood him as speaking in a financial sense only—as he intended that she should; and she brightened up and answered:
“Ah, well, Alick, dear, since it was not very vexatious business, never mind if it did keep you away from me a few hours longer than you or I expected. I can not hope to have you always here beside me; but you are here now; and all is made up to you, is it not?”