"You know I don't like it," she repeated.
"In that case you need not have told me," he said.
"I choose to tell you. I'll say so as often as I see you—as often as I like."
It was an odd conference—back to back—the old lady stiff and high—staring pale and grimly at the opposite wall. The Baronet looking with a quizzical smile on his handsome face in the mirror—now plucking at a whisker—now poking at a curl with his finger-tip—and now in the same light way arranging the silken fall of his necktie.
"There's nothing my dear little mamma can say, I'll not listen to with pleasure."
"There is much I might say you could not listen to with pleasure." The cold was growing more intense, and bitter in tone and emphasis, as she addressed the Italian picture of Adonis and his two dogs hanging on the distant wall.
"Well, with respect, not with pleasure—no," said he, and tapped his white upper teeth with the nail of his middle finger.
"Assuming, then, that you speak truth, it is high time, Jekyl Marlowe, that you should alter your courses—here's your daughter, just come out. It is ridiculous, your affecting the vices of youth. Make up as you will—you're past the middle age—you're an elderly man now."
"You can't vex me that way, you dear old mamma," he said, with a chuckle, which looked for the first time a little vicious in the glass. "We baronets, you know, are all booked, and all the world can read our ages; but you women manage better—you and your two dear sisters, Winifred and Georgiana."
"They are dead," interrupted Lady Alice, with more asperity than pathos.