'And you are awfully impertinent,' she said, smiling. 'Don't you remember you are a married man?'
'I do, to my cost,' he answered. 'And you are a married woman!'
'Oh, but I am so different,' she declared naïvely. 'You see, you have got a wonderful celebrity for a wife—clever and brilliant, and all that. Now, poor Brancewith is a dreadful, dear old dunce, and I should really die if I hadn't some other man to speak to sometimes—'
'Or several other men!' he put in, taking her fan from her hand and beginning to wave it to and fro.
She laughed.
'Perhaps! How jealous you are! Do you treat your wife to these sort of sarcasms?'
'I wish you wouldn't talk about my wife,' he said pettishly. 'My wife and I have nothing in common.'
'Really!' Lily Brancewith yawned slightly. 'How often that happens in married life, doesn't it? She is here to-night, isn't she?'
'Yes, she is in the rooms somewhere,' and Carlyon began to look decidedly cross. 'She was quite the centre of attraction till you came in. Then, of course, it was a case of a small star paling before the full moon in all her splendour!'
'How sweetly poetical! But please don't break my fan,' and she took the delicate toy in question from him. 'It cost twenty guineas, and it isn't paid for yet.'