"Nobody could possibly suspect you!" Roydon said, looking noble, and glaring at Stephen.
"My poor child!" Joseph said, creditably, everyone felt, in face of so much folly. "You must be brave, my dear, and calm. We must all be brave. Nat would have wished it.
A certain pensiveness descended upon the company, as each member of it pondered this pronouncement. Mathilda felt that Joseph would soon succeed in making them forget the real Nathaniel, and accept instead the figment of his rose-coloured imagination. She said: "What do we do now?"
"We have already sent for the doctor," Joseph said, with a glance of fellowship thrown in his nephew's direction. "There is nothing that we can do."
"We can have dinner," said Paula, brusquely putting into words the unworthy thought in more than one mind.
There was an outcry. Valerie said that it made her sick to think of eating; Mottisfont remarked that it was hardly the time to think of dinner.
"How much longer do you want to wait?" asked Stephen. "It's already past nine."
Mottisfont found Stephen so annoying that he could hardly keep his animosity out of his voice. Stephen made him feel a fool, and some evil genius always prompted him to follow up one ineptitude with another. He now said: "Surely none of us means to have dinner tonight!"
"Why not tonight, if we mean to eat tomorrow?" Stephen enquired. "When will it be decent for us to eat again?"
"You make a mock of everything!"