His wife looked at him with a slightly mocking smile on her lips.
"I wonder if you will always be so ready to sacrifice your pleasures to my unexpressed desires."
"Always! always!" replied Guy fervently, kneeling beside her chair. "Your slightest wish will always be my law, Alizon."
"Till the honeymoon is over, I suppose," said Alizon a trifle sadly, as she passed her fingers through his hair.
"I'm afraid the honeymoon is over--in the eyes of the world at least," responded Errington ruefully. "We've been three months married, you know, and to-day is our last one of solitude, for Eustace and his friend will soon be here--are you sorry?"
"Oh, yes, very sorry," she replied, indifferently, suppressing a yawn; "these last three months have been charming."
Errington looked slightly disappointed at her lack of fervour, and to make up for it commenced to vehemently declare that he did not want to see anyone, that he could live for the next century with her alone, she was all the world to him, the one thing he lived for, etc., etc. in fact gave glib utterance to all the fond rhapsodies which constantly pour from the mouths of adoring lovers and newly-married men.
Kneeling beside her, his face glowing with passionate feeling and his blue eyes fixed adoringly on the face of his divinity, Guy Errington looked gallant, handsome and fervid enough to have satisfied the most exacting woman. Yet, strange to say, for some inexplicable reason, this wife of three months appeared slightly bored by his erotic enthusiasm.
"You are the pearl of husbands, my dear Guy," she observed idly when he ceased his protestations, "but confess now, on your knees as you are, that you feel a trifle weary of this perfect bliss--this society of two--and long for your dogs, your horses, and your coverts."
At this accurate divination of his real feelings, Errington looked somewhat disconcerted, for despite the ardour of his protestations he did feel slightly weary of this monotonous tranquillity, and in his secret heart longed for the things she mentioned.