"It was one of mine," Mrs. Briss replied as promptly as I could reasonably have expected; "in the sense that—as you've only to consider—it was to lead more or less directly to these present words of ours."
If I had only to consider, nothing was more easy; but each time I considered, I was ready to show, the less there seemed left by the act. "Ah, but you had then already backed out. Won't you understand—for you're a little discouraging—that I want to catch you at the earlier stage?"
"To 'catch' me?" I had indeed expressions!
"Absolutely catch! Focus you under the first shock of the observation that was to make everything fall to pieces for you."
"But I've told you," she stoutly resisted, "that there was no 'first' shock."
"Well, then, the second or the third."
"There was no shock," Mrs. Briss magnificently said, "at all."
It made me somehow break into laughter. "You found it so natural then—and you so rather liked it—to make up your mind of a sudden that you had been steeped in the last intellectual intimacy with a maniac?"
She thought once more, and then, as I myself had just previously done, came up in another place. "I had at the moment you speak of wholly given up any idea of Lady John."
But it was so feeble it made me smile. "Of course you had, you poor innocent! You couldn't otherwise, hours before, have strapped the saddle so tight on another woman."