They had been alone together for three days, three days and three nights of happiness; and on the evening of the fourth day Tyson had found her reading—yes, actually reading!
He sat down opposite her to watch the curious sight.
Perhaps she had said to herself: "Some day I shall be old, and very likely I shall be ugly. If I am stupid too, he will be bored, and perhaps he will leave me. So now—I am going to be his intellectual companion."
He was amused, just as Stanistreet had been. "I say, I can't have that, you know. What have you got there?"
She held up her book without speaking. "Othello," of all things in the world!
"Shakespeare? I thought so. When a woman's in a damned bad temper she always reads Shakespeare, or Locke on the Human Understanding. Come out of that."
Though Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her little teeth very hard, the corners of her mouth and eyes curled with mischief. It was delicious to feel that she could torment Nevill, to know that she had so much power. And while she pretended to read she played with the pearl necklace she wore. It was one shade with the white of her beautiful throat.
"Who gave you those pearls?"
She made no answer, but her hand dropped a little consciously. He had given them to her that afternoon, remarking, with rather questionable taste, that they were "a wedding-present for the second Mrs. Nevill Tyson."
He leant over her chair and assailed her with questions to which no answer came, to which no answer was possible, punctuating his periods with kisses.