Rosy lay there looking up at him. “It must be pretty thick, when you talk that way. However, I don’t care what happens, for I know I shall be looked after.”
“Nothing will happen—nothing will happen,” Paul remarked, simply.
The girl’s rejoinder to this was to say in a moment, “You have a different tone since you have taken up the Princess.”
She spoke with a certain severity, but he broke out, as if he had not heard her, “I like your idea of the female aristocracy quarrelling over a dirty brute like me.”
“I don’t know how dirty you are, but I know you smell of soap,” said Rosy, with serenity. “They won’t quarrel; that’s not the way they do it. Yes, you are taking a different tone, for some purpose that I can’t discover just yet.”
“What do you mean by that? When did I ever take a tone?” her brother asked.
“Why then do you speak as if you were not remarkable, immensely remarkable—more remarkable than anything any one, male or female, good or bad, of the aristocracy or of the vulgar sort, can ever do for you?”
“What on earth have I ever done to show it?” Paul demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know your secrets, and that’s one of them. But we’re out of the common beyond any one, you and I, and, between ourselves, with the door fastened, we might as well admit it.”
“I admit it for you, with all my heart,” said the young man, laughing.