CHAPTER XV. PLAIN SPEAKING.
“Il est rare que la tête des rois soit faite à la mesure de
leur couronne.”
“What I want is something to eat,” Miss Marguerite Wade confided in an undertone to Tony Cornish, a few minutes later in Lady Ferriby's drawing-room. She said this with a little glance of amusement, as Cornish stood before her with two plates of biscuits, which certainly did not promise much sustenance.
“Then,” answered Cornish, “you have come to the wrong house.”
Marguerite kept him waiting while she arranged biscuits in her saucer. He set the plates aside, and returned to her in answer to her tacit order, conveyed by laying one hand on a vacant chair by her side. Marguerite was in the midst of that brief period of a woman's life wherein she dares to state quite clearly what she wants.
“Why don't you marry Joan?” she asked, eating a biscuit with a fine young optimism, which almost implied that things sometimes taste as nice as they look.
“Why don't you marry Major White?” retorted Tony; and Marguerite turned and looked at him gravely.
“For a man,” she said, “that wasn't so dusty. So few men have any eyes in their head, you know.” And she thoughtfully finished the biscuits. “I think I'll go back to the bread-and-butter,” she said. “It's the last time Lady Ferriby will ask me to stay to tea, so I may as well be hanged for—three pence as three farthings. And I think I will be more careful with you in the future. For a man, you are rather sharp.” And she looked at him doubtfully.
“When you attain my age,” replied Tony, “you will have arrived at the conclusion that the whole world is sharper than one took it to be. It does not do to think that the world is blind. It is better not to care whether it sees or not.”
“Women cannot afford to do that,” returned Marguerite, with the accumulated wisdom of nearly a score of years. “Oh, hang!” she added, a moment later, under her breath, as she perceived Joan and Major White coming towards them.