"Please talk."
"I'm going to talk later on," she said. "I'm going to talk like a mother to you."
"Won't you talk like yourself in the meanwhile? I don't want anything better."
Then she talked like herself; and the plates were changed, and the hour was pleasurable. It was a very uncommon hour, because her friend was so nice. The pretty girl's friend is nearly always an infliction, and makes mischief afterwards because she hasn't been sufficiently admired. It was such a pleasurable hour that Conrad knew a pang of regret in reflecting that there would be few more like it—Rosalind, no doubt, would flee from Blithepoint as soon as the other women. Would he meet her again? Of course she would drift into another Company; meet another man in another town. Damn!
"I'm going to miss that girl," he mused, "and know she's flirting with somebody else while I'm remembering her!"
"'The world,'" he exclaimed, indulging his weakness for quotation, "'is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel!'" And neither Rosalind nor Tattie found it needful to inquire to which category he was assigning himself; there may be sentimental seconds even over a chateaubriand. He added, "Let me fill up that glass for you—you've nothing there but froth."
It was more than half-past three when the waiter abased himself in letting them out, and as they turned along the Parade, Tattie recollected that she had "promised to be with Miss Vavasour at four." They all stopped for a minute, and Conrad tried to look as if he didn't want her to go. However she went, and he and Rosalind sauntered on without her.
"What shall we do?" he said. "Shall we go and hear the band?"
"There isn't one in the afternoon this time of year."
"Not in the band-stand, but I think there is on the pier. The band-stand is retained chiefly as a rendezvous, I believe. When he says 'Where will you meet me this evening?' she always says 'Opposite the band-stand.'"