When she reached home she went up to the nursery where Evangeline was putting Ivor to bed, it being nurse’s afternoon out. When he was tucked up and Evangeline was tidying the nursery, Teresa sat down by the fire and said, “I met Lady Varens and had tea with her. David is coming home in a few days, and they are going to stay with Mr. Manley. They are going to make up their minds what they will do with Aldwych.”
“Oh, are they?” said Evangeline. “Do you suppose they will go back?”
“I should think quite likely.”
“You look very pleased, Dicky,” said Evangeline, looking at her sister’s face in the firelight. “I am so glad if it is all right. But Dicky——” she hesitated in a frightened way—“you know I have no nerves in these days, and I get unnecessary panics—, don’t build on his being the same as when he went away, will you? You know what men are.”
“Oh, Chips, do drop that men and women business,” said Teresa wearily. “There are men and men and David is David.”
“I know,” she admitted, “but you see Evan is also Evan, so I warn you from my experience—quite kindly meant, and you are angry, quite fairly.”
“I think you would like him best to be Evan if you loved him,” said Teresa. “He wouldn’t be ‘men’ any more, and you wouldn’t compare him with yourself.”
“I do love him,” Evangeline answered; “but he thinks I don’t because I deceived him.”
“Do you suppose he doesn’t love you because he deceived you?”
“I am sure he doesn’t, because men—I am sorry, I won’t say it. But he is always talking about ‘women’ too. In fact, he began.”