“I don’t think I can tell you that.”
“You shall tell me. I have some rights. I was your first friend, and I loved you myself.”
Julia looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He had used the past tense, but he looked more like the present.
“I never thought I could breathe his name,” she whispered. “But I can tell you. It’s Cecil Rhodes.”
“Rhodes? Upon my word, you have good taste!” Then he burst into irrepressible laughter, and threw himself back in his chair.
“Oh, what a kid you are! What a baby! And I thought you were on the road to become a clever woman.”
Julia smiled mysteriously and picked up her crown. Her voice and eyes were more ingenuous than ever. “I told you, partly because you are my only man friend, the only man I don’t hate, and partly because you would have made love to me yourself in another minute. But if you tell Bridgit or Ishbel —”
“Never!” Once more Nigel laughed until the tears blotted his vision.
“Now I must go out and walk about and try to look like a duchess in a semitransparent shell. Will you give me your arm?”