Medora smiled.
"How clever; how charming!" she said. "Leaving you altogether free to pick your own age. I hope you didn't go beyond thirty-five. You must have been quite charming in your early thirties."
"That's kind of you, I'm sure; but I don't believe that I was ever 'charming' at any age. I think you've used that word once too often. I was a quiet, studious lad, with nice notions, but possibly something of a prig. I was less 'charming' than correct. The young ladies had the greatest confidence in me,—not one of them was ever 'afraid'."
"Why, how horrid! How utterly unsatisfactory! Nor their mothers?"
"No. And I'm still single, as you're advised. And I'm not sure that the young gentlemen cared much more for me. If I had had a little more 'gimp' and verve, I might have equalled the particular young gentleman of whom we have been discoursing. But…."
His obviously artificial style of speech concealed, as she guessed, some real feeling.
"Oh, if you insist on disparaging yourself…!"
"I was quite as coolly correct as I apprehend him to be; and if I could only have contrived to compass the charming, as well, who knows what——?"
"You don't like my word. Is there a better, a more suitable?"
"No. You have the mot juste."