“I trust not, indeed,” she said, with a smile. “I was given to understand, I own, that I might find him a trifle—a trifle high-spirited, perhaps.”
“You have either a genius for understatement, ma’am, or the truth was not told you, if that is what you understand.”
She laughed. “Well, you are very frank, sir! I should not expect to be told quite all the truth, but I might collect it, reading between the lines, I fancy.”
“You are a brave woman!” he said.
Her amusement grew. “I am sure I am no such thing! I can but contrive as best I may. I dare say he has been a little spoiled?”
“I doubt of there being anything to spoil,” he replied.
The coldly dispassionate tone in which he uttered this remark made her reply in equally chilly accents, “You do not desire me, I am persuaded, to refine too much upon your words, sir. I am very hopeful of teaching him to mind me in time.”
“Teaching him to mind you?” he repeated, with a strong inflection of astonishment in his voice. “You will have performed something indeed if you succeed in doing so! You will have, moreover, the distinction of being the only person to whom he has attended in all his life!”
“Surely, sir, you—?” she faltered.
“Good God, no!” he said impatiently.