“Do you think the next puppies will be spotted quite all over?”
Continuing to twirl his moustache, Lord Valleys answered:
“I think it is not improbable, Ann.”
“Why do you like them spotted like that? Oh! they're kissing Sambo—I must go!”
Lord Valleys followed her, his eyebrows a little raised.
As he approached the terrace his wife came, towards him. Her colour was, deeper than usual, and she had the look, higher and more resolute, peculiar to her when she had been opposed. In truth she had just been through a passage of arms with Courtier, who, as the first revealer of Mrs. Noel's situation, had become entitled to a certain confidence on this subject. It had arisen from what she had intended as a perfectly natural and not unkind remark, to the effect that all the trouble had come from Mrs. Noel not having made her position clear to Miltoun from the first.
He had at once grown very red.
“It's easy, Lady Valleys, for those who have never been in the position of a lonely woman, to blame her.”
Unaccustomed to be withstood, she had looked at him intently:
“I am the last person to be hard on a woman for conventional reasons. But I think it showed lack of character.”