“Why, this is the first time you have ever given me worldly advice,” she laughed.
“Only a friendly hint,” he answered, rising and putting his book in its place with the precision of a spinster.
Chapter II
“This is what I call a worldly paradise!” A girl with a face like dear Lady Disdain’s sank into a divan placed near the conservatory; her voice chimed in prettily with the music of a spraying fountain and the soft strains of remote stringed instruments.
“Is it a frivolous conceit?” she continued, laughing up to the man who stood beside her; “or do the soft light of many candles, faint music, radiant women, and courtly men, satisfy your predilections also that such a place is as near heaven as this wicked world approaches?”
“You forget; paradise was occupied by but two. To my notion, nothing can be farther removed from Elysium than a modern drawing-room full of guests.”
“And leaving out the guests?”
“They say imagination can make a paradise of a desert, given the necessary contingencies.”
“A solitude of two who love? Dr. Kemp, methinks you are a romantic.”