Dopsy did not allow him much leisure for mournful meditation. She prattled on in that sweetly girlish manner which was meant to be all spirit and sparkle—glancing from theme to theme, like the butterfly among the flowers, and showing a level ignorance on all. Mr. Hamleigh listened with Christian resignation, and even allowed himself to be her escort home—and to seem especially attentive to her at afternoon tea: for although it may take two to make a quarrel, assuredly one, if she be but brazen enough, may make a flirtation. Dopsy felt that time was short, and that strong measures were necessary. Mr. Hamleigh had been very polite—attentive even. Dopsy, accustomed to the free and easy manners of her brother's friends, mistook Mr. Hamleigh's natural courtesy to the sex for particular homage to the individual. But he had "said nothing," and she was no nearer the assurance of becoming Mrs. Hamleigh than she had been on the evening of his arrival. Dopsy had been fain to confess this to Mopsy in the confidence of sisterly discourse.
"It seems as if I might just as well have had a try for him myself, instead of standing out to give you a better chance," retorted Mopsy, somewhat scornfully.
"Go in and win, if you can," said Dopsy. "It won't be the first time you've tried to cut me out."
Dopsy, embittered by the sense of failure, determined on new tactics. Hitherto she had been all sparkle—now she melted into a touching sadness.
"What a delicious old room this is," she murmured, glancing round at the bookshelves and dark panelling, the high wide chimney piece with its coat-of-arms, in heraldic colours, flashing and gleaming against a background of brown oak. "I cannot help feeling wretched at the idea that next week I shall be far away from this dear place—in dingy, dreary London. Oh, Mr. Hamleigh,"—detaining him while she selected one particular piece of sugar from the basin he was handing her—"don't you detest London?"
"Not absolutely. I have sometimes found it endurable."
"Ah, you have your clubs—just the one pleasantest street in all the great overgrown city—and that street lined with palaces, whose doors are always standing open for you. Libraries, smoking rooms, billiard-tables, perfect dinners, and all that is freshest and brightest in the way of society. I don't wonder men like London. But for women it has only two attractions—Mudie, and the shop-windows!"
"And the park—the theatres—the churches—the delight of looking at other women's gowns and bonnets. I thought that could never pall?"
"It does, though. There comes a time when one feels weary of everything," said Dopsy, pensively stirring her tea, and so fixing Mr. Hamleigh with her conversation that he was obliged to linger—yea, even to set down his own teacup on an adjacent table, and to seat himself by the charmer's side.
"I thought you so delighted in the theatres," he said. "You were full of enthusiasm about the drama the night I first dined here."