“Who accept it, at an even lower valuation; and you and I, Mr. Tony Cornish, are cynics who talk cheap epigrams to hide our thoughts.”
They walked on for a few yards in silence. Then Tony turned in his quick way and looked at her. He had thin, mobile lips, which expressed friendship and curiosity at this moment.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
She turned and looked at him with grave, searching eyes, and when these met his it became apparent that their friendship had re-established itself.
“Of your affairs,” she answered, “and funerals.”
“Both lugubrious,” suggested Cornish. “But I am obliged to you for so far honouring me.”
He broke off, and again walked on in silence. She glanced at him half angrily, and gave a quick shrug of the shoulders.
“Then you will not speak,” she said, opening her parasol with a snap. “So be it. The time has perhaps not come yet. But if I am in the humour when that time does come, you will find that you have no ally so strong as I. Ah, you may stick your chin out and look as innocent as you like! You are not easy in your mind, my good friend, about this precious Malgamite scheme. But I ask no confidences, and, bon Dieu! I give none.”
She broke off with a little laugh, and looked at him beneath the shade of her parasol. She had a hundred foreign ways of putting a whole wealth of meaning into a single gesture, into a movement of a parasol or a fan, such as women acquire, and use upon poor defenceless men, who must needs face the world with stolid faces and slow, dumb hands.
Cornish answered the laugh readily enough. “Ah!” he said, “then I am accused of uneasiness of mind of preoccupation, in fact. I plead guilty. I made a mistake. I got up too early. It was a fine morning, and I was tempted to take a walk before breakfast, which we have at half-past nine, in a fine old British way. We have toast and a fried sole. Great is the English milord!”