"Ah?" wondered Anthony, off his guard. "A mysterious disappearance?"
"Bravo!" crowed Adrian, gleefully. "I am not only witty myself, but the cause of wit in others." He patted Anthony on the shoulder. "A mysterious disappearance. The mot is capital. That's it, to a hair's breadth. Oft thought before, but ne'er so well expressed. The gentleman (as the rude multitude in their unfeeling way would put it) is dead."
"On the whole," mused Anthony, looking him up and down with a reflective eye, "you 're an effulgent sort of egotist, as egotists go; but you yield much cry for precious little wool."
"Yes, dead," Adrian repeated, pursuing his own train of ideas. "Donna Susanna is a widow, a poor lone widow, a wealthy, eligible widow. You must be kind to her."
"Why don't you marry her?" Anthony enquired.
"Pooh," said Adrian.
"Why don't you?" Anthony insisted. "If she 's really rich? You don't dislike her—you respect her—perhaps, if you set your mind to it, you could even learn to love her. She 'd give you a home and a position in the world; she 'd make a sober citizen of you; and she 'd take you off my hands. You know whether you 're an expense—and a responsibility. Why don't you marry her? You owe it to me not to let such an occasion slip."
"Pooh," said Adrian. But he looked conscious, and he laughed a deliriously conscious laugh. "What nonsense you do talk. I 'm too young, I 'm far too young, to think of marrying."
"See him blush and giggle and shake his pretty curls," said Anthony, with scorn, addressing the universe.
By this time they had skirted the house, and come round to the southern front, where the sunshine lay unbroken on the lawn, and the smell of the box hedges, strong in the still air, seemed a thing almost ponderable: the low, long front, a mellow line of colour, with the purple of its old red bricks and the dark green of its ivy, sunlit against the darker green of the park, and the blue of the tender English sky. The terrace steps were warm under their feet, as they mounted them. In terra-cotta urns, at intervals upon the terrace balustrade, roses grew, roses red and white; and from larger urns, one at either side of the hall-door, red and white roses were espaliered, intertwining overhead.