They went on for a few minutes in silence.
‘Have you published anything with your signature, Miss Yule?’ Jasper at length inquired.
‘Nothing. I only help father a little.’
The silence that again followed was broken this time by Marian.
‘When you chanced to mention Mr Reardon’s name,’ she said, with a diffident smile in which lay that suggestion of humour so delightful upon a woman’s face, ‘you were going to say something more about him?’
‘Only that—’ he broke off and laughed. ‘Now, how boyish it was, wasn’t it? I remember doing just the same thing once when I came home from school and had an exciting story to tell, with preservation of anonymities. Of course I blurted out a name in the first minute or two, to my father’s great amusement. He told me that I hadn’t the diplomatic character. I have been trying to acquire it ever since.
‘But why?’
‘It’s one of the essentials of success in any kind of public life. And I mean to succeed, you know. I feel that I am one of the men who do succeed. But I beg your pardon; you asked me a question. Really, I was only going to say of Reardon what I had said before: that he hasn’t the tact requisite for acquiring popularity.’
‘Then I may hope that it isn’t his marriage with my cousin which has proved a fatal misfortune?’
‘In no case,’ replied Milvain, averting his look, ‘would he have used his advantages.’