He laughed rather desolately. “Suppose that I were to say the same to you?”
“I am temperamental; you are not,” she replied coolly. “Sit down, dear. Let us be warm again.”
“Shall I have the fire replenished——”
“No,” she said with her slow smile, “you don't understand.”
He lounged again on the arm of her chair. She leaned back and sighed contentedly, the smile on her red lips growing sweeter with each breath that she took. He felt his blood warming once more.
For a long time they sat thus, looking into each other's eyes without speaking. He was trying to fathom the mystery that lurked at the bottom of those smiling wells; she, on the other hand, deluded herself with the idea that she was reading his innermost thought.
“I have been considering the advisability of sending Frederic abroad for a year or two,” said he at last.
She started. She had been far from right in her reading.
“Now? This winter?”
“Yes. He has never been abroad.”