“Better now, sweetheart?” Basil gently inquired. “Look up a bit, and let us dry those naughty eyes. I don’t want my beautiful wife to be disfigured by tears.”
He suited the action to the words, raised her head as if it had been made of egg-shell china with one big, brown hand, and, possessing himself of the absurd morsel of lace she called her handkerchief, tenderly wiped very genuine tears of anger from her long eyelashes. Then he sat her up straight on his knee like a doll, and asked, smiling imperturbably:
“Tell me now, oh, Un-Serene Highness, what causes all this big sorrow.”
The manner in which she lowered her eyes and pouted partook of nothing less than genius. Her white breast was still rising and falling charmingly in its frame of velvet and ermine, making the big octagonal diamonds hanging from her necklace throb with prismatic light, and altogether she was irresistible in her half-contrite, half-resentful mood.
“You treat me like ... like a baby,” she murmured, pettishly. “And yet I am your wife, and I have my rights, haven’t I?”
“Most decidedly!” he agreed, repressing a smile with difficulty. What was coming now!
“Well, then,” she went on, twisting the little chain of decorations in his buttonhole between her slim fingers, “why should I not feel hurt when you show me, so very rudely, that I am not first in your thoughts?”
Basil, greatly amused, laughed outright. “So, so!” he said, gaily. “You have discovered all by your own wee self that you are not first in my thoughts! What a clever little woman it is, to be sure! Especially under present circumstances. You should be mightily proud of such a painstaking and praiseworthy achievement.”
“You can laugh!” she cried, leaping from his knee and confronting him, her cheeks flaming with real indignation. “You can laugh as much as you please, but I’m not laughing ... not laughing at all, I assure you ... nor would you if you knew how you have offended and affronted me.”
“Is this serious?” Basil asked, getting to his feet after one painfully astonished glance at her. “A joke must not be carried too far, you know, my dear.”