She shook her head.
“No,” she insisted, “it is something more enduring than that.”
At which interesting point in the discussion, to John Musgrave’s annoyance, a shrill scream penetrated the stillness, and Mrs Chadwick’s voice was heard exclaiming in accents of astonishment and delight:
“Oh, Diogenes, Diogenes, dear old fellow!... Wherever did you come from? And how did you get your coat in that horrible mess?”
Diogenes, finding it slow on the terrace, had sauntered into the drawing-room and discovered himself to Mrs Chadwick.
Peggy glanced swiftly into the face of the man beside her and laughed happily, and John Musgrave, finding to his vast amazement the laughing face held firmly between his two hands, bent his head suddenly and kissed the curving lips.
It is possible that could he have looked back into the days before he knew Peggy he would have failed to recognise as himself the man who, in response to the vicar’s assertion that occasionally people married for love, had made the shocked ejaculation: “Do they, indeed?” John Musgrave was learning.