"It's all very well, but I am glad this has happened, my dear."
"Glad!"
"You needed some such"—he was about to say "lesson" and veered away from the priggishness of the word—"experience, to keep you in my despised conventional way. Now, tell me. Are Maur's intentions strictly—er—honourable?"
"Honourable! What are you talking about, and will you stop smiling?"
Her head tucked itself out of sight again under his chin and he rested his lips an instant on it before explaining.
"I mean, is he wanting to marry you?"
"I am sure I don't know. I should think it hardly likely now. If so, he can't have considered that my reception of his advances augured matrimonial bliss. But you were all out to put him in a lethal chamber before and now you seem to be excusing him."
"To him, I am your somewhat elderly brother; you are a widow, and of age, who lives with me pending the next suitor on the scene. No one could imagine, who does not know the truth, that there will not be several others, and, amongst them, someone to whom you might reasonably be expected to listen. I have my own small sense of Justice, you see," Cyprian finished dryly. "And I, of all men, should have learnt to be merciful."
"Touché," admitted Ferlie. "It is my turn to tell you to go on. But what do you expect me to do about his lunatic scheming and dreaming?"
"I expect you, just for this once, to do as you are told. What I am going to do is what I should have done in the first place: forbid him to speak to my—sister. So much is simple. But I am looking ahead, and I think you should, in the circumstances, cultivate women-friends more and men less!"