"I'd crowns resign
To call thee mine."
And with what coolness and self-possession she had glanced at the paper held under the keyboard in one hand, while running over the keys with the other; and then, as one with a life-long experience of intrigue and plotting, had idly pencilled her reply on the same scrap, that she casually let fall, while directing the singer's attention to the music, for Arthur to pick up!
"I'd gowns decline
To call me thine."
"It was so like her," Arthur said afterwards; "so quick and bright, and so superior to grammar." But he said that in postnuptial days.
Her retrospections were interrupted by the subject of them, who was immediately followed by tea. This harmless domestic beverage was taken in stony silence, broken at last by a sudden desperate exclamation in a bass voice of, "What the deuce is the matter with you, Ermengarde?" that made her literally sit up.
"Nothing," she replied, quickly recovering; and speaking sadly. "At least, only what is usual after influenza."
"Headaches? Try that old port."
"I'd rather try a new port, a foreign port—sunshine, thorough change—something bright and cheering."
"Well, that's out of the question. I can't get off just now, as you know," she heard, and replied that she might advertise for a fellow-traveller or go alone. As for expense, what more expensive than illness? Besides, the thing was so cheaply done nowadays; there was no occasion to go far, the Mediterranean was quite far enough for her, somewhere in the Côte d'Azur—Nice, Hyères—a day's journey, nothing more.
"What more could the lady want?" he quoted in his detestably ironic way, and suggested visits to country friends or a week at Bournemouth, before slipping behind his Times, and thence into peaceful slumber.