"Since when?" coldly. "There is not a woman living with a keener memory than yours."
"You flatter me. In affairs that interest me, perhaps."
"You never meant to pay him. It is horrible."
"My dear Fortune, how you jump at conclusions! Did I not offer him a draft the very first thing?"
"Knowing that at such a moment he could not possibly accept it?" derisively. "Sometimes I hate you!"
"In these days filial devotion is a lost art."
"No, no; it is a flower parents have ceased to cultivate."
And there was in the tone a strained note which described an intense longing to be loved. For if George Percival Algernon Jones was a lonely young man, it was the result of his own blindness; whereas Fortune Chedsoye turned hither and thither in search of that which she never could find. The wide Lybian desert held upon its face a loneliness, a desolation, less mournful than that which reigned within her heart.
"Hush! We are growing sentimental," warned the mother. "Besides, I believe we are attracting attention." Her glance swept a half-circle complacently.