“AM I?” said Dr. Martineau and brought a scrutinizing eye to bear on Sir Richmond’s face.
“I want to go on talking to Miss Grammont for a day or so,” Sir Richmond admitted.
“Then I shall prefer to leave your party.”
There were some moments of silence.
“I am really very sorry to find myself in this dilemma,” said Sir Richmond with a note of genuine regret in his voice.
“It is not a dilemma,” said Dr. Martineau, with a corresponding loss of asperity. “I grant you we discover we differ upon a question of taste and convenience. But before I suggested this trip, I had intended to spend a little time with my old friend Sir Kenelm Latter at Bournemouth. Nothing simpler than to go to him now....”
“I shall be sorry all the same.”
“I could have wished,” said the doctor, “that these ladies had happened a little later....”
The matter was settled. Nothing more of a practical nature remained to be said. But neither gentleman wished to break off with a harsh and bare decision.
“When the New Age is here,” said Sir Richmond, “then, surely, a friendship between a man and a woman will not be subjected to the—the inconveniences your present code would set about it? They would travel about together as they chose?”