"Let it fall by all means; only let us call things by their proper names. You and I, Belle, know the trouble which follows on the present confusion. And if we, eminently respectable people, suffered much, many must suffer more. Many! Why the question, 'Is Marriage a Failure?' fills up the interstices of conversation left between the Rights of Labour and Home Rule. How can it be anything but a failure when people are taught to expect impossibilities? when they are told that love is better than duty? Thank heaven, we never were in love with one another!"
"Never?"
"No,--at least,--yes! perhaps I was one day. Do you remember when you kissed your cousin Dick in the church garden at Faizapore? I was decidedly jealous as I stood by the canal bridge. If he had lived, Belle, I think you would have married him."
She did not answer, but sate softly smiling to herself. "So long ago as that," she said at last in a contented tone of voice.
Philip started to his feet with a half-embarrassed laugh. Even now, after all these years, her woman's nature, in its utter inconsequence, was a puzzle to him,--perhaps to herself.
"Come," he said prosaically, "I'm sure it must be time for lunch."
"Are you so very hungry?" she asked, dusting from her dress, with something of regret in the action, the sweet-smelling herbs which she had idly gathered from the crannies of the cliff and crumbled to pieces for the sake of their perfume.
"I ought to be, seeing I had no breakfast."
She started up in her turn. "Philip! How could you? and never to tell me!"
"You see we were late all through; something went wrong somewhere, and then I had to catch the ten o'clock train. Don't look horrified; I got a stale bun at Swindon."