"Oh, I know. I know. Of course you're annoyed, especially after such a queer experience. We won't discuss it—it will be useless. But that's my opinion, you know. I think that he was completely successful, according to his own ideas." The battle raged; I need not add that the mystery, far from being undiscussed, was driven up and down the field of possibility till a late hour; nor that Mabel held to her position, in high disparagement, as Lucy felt, of Lancelot, deeply involved.
An upshot, and a shrewd one, was Mabel's abrupt, "Well, what are you going to do now? I mean, supposing he does it again?"
Lucy mused. "I don't somehow think he will, for a long time." She added naïvely, "I wish he would. I like it."
Mabel understood her. "You mean that you like him for doing it." And dreamy Lucy nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what I mean. I do, awfully."
Mabel here kissed Lucy. "Dearest, you're wonderfully sweet. You would love anybody who loved you."
"I don't think I would," Lucy said, "but I should certainly have loved James more if he had ever seemed to love me. And I can't possibly doubt that he did that day that Lancelot went back. What bothers me is that he stopped there." And so, to it again, in the manner of women, tireless in speculation about what is not to be understood.
James, restored in tone, was affable, and even considerate, in the morning. Mabel, studying him with new eyes, had to admire his flawless surface, though her conviction of the shallow depth of him was firmlier rooted than before. "He is—he really is—a tremendous donkey, poor James," she thought to herself as he gave out playful sarcasms at her expense, and was incisive without loss of urbanity. Mabel was urgent with her sister to join the party at Peltry when Urquhart was there. "I do wish you would. He's rather afraid of you, I think, and that will throw him upon me—which is what is wanted." That was how she put it.
James, quite the secure, backed her up. "I should go if I were you," he said to Lucy from behind the Morning Post. "It will do you a great deal of good. You always choose February to moult in, and you will have to be feathered down there. Besides, it's evident you can be useful to Mabel." Lucy went so far as to get out her engagement book, and to turn up the date, not very seriously. What she found confirmed her. "I can't," she said; "it's out of the question."
"Why, what is happening?" Mabel must know.
"It's an Opera night," said Lucy. "The Walküre is happening."