"O Lord! now I shall catch it."
"Don't be afraid, Dobbin, I'm not going to scold. But I know you so well, how direct and persistent you are—yes, and how sincere—it's only fair to tell you, the traditions of our kind to the contrary notwithstanding, I'm still in love with my husband."
For a moment Richard Daubeney was silent, staring at his plate. Then he roused with a light-hearted shrug and smile.
"And that's that!"
Lucinda nodded with amiable emphasis: "That's that."
The black arm of a waiter came between them, and the woman let an abstracted gaze stray idly across the shimmering field of the table, while the man at her side ceased not to remark with glowing appreciation the perfection of her gesture, at once so gracious, spirited, and reserved.
Never one to wear her heart on her sleeve, Lucinda. Look at her now: Who would ever guess she had lived to learn much, to unlearn more, in so brief a term of married life? Surely the sweet lift of her head, the shadowy smile that lurked ever about her lips, the exquisite poise of that consummate body bespoke neither disillusionment nor discontent. And who should say the dream was not a happy one that clouded the accustomed clearness of her eyes?
Unclouded and serene once more, these turned again his way.
"It's like you, Dobbin, to start making love to me all over again, precisely as if my being married meant nothing, in the first minutes of our first meeting in five years, without offering to tell me a single thing about yourself."
"Nothing much to tell. Everybody knows, when you engaged yourself to marry Druce, I rode off to the wars. Oh, for purely selfish motives! If I'd stayed, I'd have made a stupid exhibition of myself one way or another, taken to drink or something equally idiotic. So vanity prompted me to blaze a trail across the waters for my beloved country to follow when its hour struck."