"An' do the washin', an' the scrubbing and the cookin'? I fancy I see you puttin' your back into that sort of work, Leah. Honey-pots are more in your line."
"I am as sick of honey-pots as you are. All this dressing and undressing, and court functions, and paltry pigeon-shooting, and skating at Prince's on sham ice, and yachting at Cowes in a floating hotel--oh, Lord, how it bores me!"
"You're always bored," grunted her husband, unsympathetically. "Can you wonder at it, when I have to go round and round and round in a decorated ring like a trick-pony? If I were a woman it would be satisfactory, no doubt."
"Well," said Jim, obtusely, "ain't you a woman?"
Leah sprang from her chair and flung out her arms with a deep chest breath. "I am a man," she announced, in resonant contralto tones. "I feel like one, anyhow. Didn't some one say there was no sense in this grown-up business. Well, I am like that. Up to the time you went after Lola Fajardo I did enjoy things all round, but somehow I feel as though the bottom had dropped out of creation."
"Drop Lola Fajardo also, then," growled the Duke, colouring. "I never went near her."
"Because you couldn't. The serpent in the bamboo--eh, Jim?"
"I don't care anything for her now."
Leah looked at him steadily. "I am glad of that, because you belong to me--to me."
"And much you think of me!"