"Presence of mind?"
"Yes. You don't seem to think of me," she added softly.
"Why should I?" he replied with a brutality that surprised himself.
She looked at him with blue eyes softly suffused, and the curve of a red mouth sweet and tremulous. "Why?" her whisper echoed him. "Because I'm a woman."
Her eyelids dropped ever so little, but their dark lashes (following the upward trend of her features) curled to such a degree that the veil was ineffectual. He saw a large slit of the wonderful, indomitable blue.
"I'm a woman, and you're a man, you see; and the world's on your side, my friend, not on mine."
She said it sweetly. If she had been bitter she would have (as she expressed it) "choked him off"; but Lady Cayley knew better than to be bitter now, at thirty-seven. She had learnt that her power was in her sweetness.
His face softened (from the other end of the room Anne saw it soften), and Lady Cayley pursued with soundless feet her fugitive advantage.
"Poor Wallie, you needn't look so frightened. I'm quite safe now, or soon will be. Didn't I tell you I was going there too? I'm going to be married."
"I'm delighted to hear it," he said stiffly.