"Indeed, I shall tell her nothing of the kind. I don't trust you, Griff—you talk too glibly about it."
Griff stroked her cheek playfully.
"You think that omelette will turn out like the women I used to paint—half-cooked inside, and dried to a cinder outside? Well, we shall see."
As a matter of fact, the omelette, as well as the rest of the dinner, turned out remarkably well. Dereham had entered Gorsthwaite with an uncomfortable feeling that he was here to be bored by a friend's wife, to make the best of a foolish job; but as the meal went on, and Kate, in her straightforward way, took up his tentative comments on men and matters, emphasizing points of view which were too simple ever to have occurred to him, he began to wonder. From wonder he passed to interest; he clean forgot the passivity which was his especial pride; he talked little, and listened much to the words he enticed by strategy from his hostess. Finally, he felt regretful when Kate left them to their smoke.
"I begin to understand," observed Dereham, after he had silently worked his way through the half of a cigar.
"What do you understand, you oracle?"
"There you're off it, old fellow. Oracles never understand—they only pretend to. That is by the way, though. What I meant was, that you seem to be really established here."
"Why, yes. I should be sorry to desert Gorsthwaite in favour of any place you could name."
"I thought it was just a pose, you see; we all thought so. You're a different man altogether, Lomax, from the Ogilvie lap-dog I used to know. Suits you better, I think."
"Dereham, will you let Mrs. Ogilvie alone? You have exacted penance enough for that folly already."