"Well, how would you put it," said Richard, "if you did not call it a grief?"
Bertha laughed again.
"If I put it at all," she answered, "I would say that he had once been very uncomfortable, but had discreetly devoted himself to getting over it, and had succeeded decently well; and last, but not least, I would add that it would be decidedly difficult to make him uncomfortable again."
Tredennis found it impossible to avoid watching her with grave interest each time she spoke or moved. He was watching her now with a sort of aside sensibility to her bright drapery, her flashing, tinkling wrists, and her screen of peacock feathers.
"She is very light," he was saying inwardly.
She turned to him with a smile.
"Would he strike you as 'a fellow with a grief'?" she inquired.
"No," he answered; "I cannot say he would."
"No," she said, "that is certain enough. If you went away and never saw him again, you would remember just this of him—if you remembered him at all: that his clothes fitted him well, that he had an agreeable laugh, that he had a civil air of giving you his attention when you spoke, and—nothing else."