‘Very!’ Marcia laughed and gave the dialogue a new turn. ‘I spent the time reading.’
‘Indeed?’
‘The Egoist.’
‘Meredith? Don’t you find him a trifle—er—for rainy weather, you know?’
‘I found the Egoist,’ she returned, ‘a most suggestive work. It throws interesting side-lights on the men one knows.’
‘Oh, come, Miss Marcia,’ he remonstrated. ‘That’s hardly fair; you slander us.’
‘You mustn’t blame me—you must blame the author. It’s a man who wrote it.’
‘He should be regarded as a traitor. In case he is captured and brought into camp, I shall order him shot at sunrise.’
‘He doesn’t accuse all men of being Sir Willoughbys,’ she returned soothingly. ‘I hadn’t thought of you in exactly that connexion. If you choose to wear the coat, you have put it on yourself.’
‘We’ll say, then, that it doesn’t fit, and I’ll resemble the other fellow—the Daniel Deronda one—what’s his name, Whitfield, Whitford?’ (Whitford, it will be remembered, was the dark horse who came in at the finish and captured the heroine.)