“Don’t mix your metaphors, darling. That squeezes. Certainly not. I should call it weakness. I dismiss it from my mind.”
“Well, I think you are a callous wretch, and I like my own disposition a million times better than yours.”
“There is no discussion on that point is there? because I most heartily agree.”
“There you are, then!” cried Grizel triumphantly. “But you will argue.”
She shook out the damp ball of a handkerchief, and held it flag-ways to the breeze, tilting her head to look into her husband’s face. “Do I look very plain?”
“Comparatively speaking—yes!” replied Martin, seizing on his revenge, whereupon Grizel proceeded to declaim in a loud, artificial voice:
... “‘Teardrops still lingered on the long eyelashes; the lovely, mutinous face was wasted and ravaged with grief, yet never in her most queenly moments had she appeared to him more alluring and sweet. For weal or woe his life was in her hands.’ ... Another fine instalment to be given in our next number!” She waved her hand and turned back to the house, while Martin, laughing, walked across the lawn to join the Squire.
Meantime Peignton and Teresa had reached the station, and he was unhappily facing a two hours’ journey which might easily devolve itself into a tête-à-tête, since considerate travellers have a habit of avoiding carriages occupied by interesting-looking young couples. He was divided between a horror of a repetition of the scene in the garden the day before, and an overpowering sympathy for the girl whom he wished to avoid. Her set composure went to his heart when he recalled the radiance of the face which had beamed at him in the same place only a few days before. She had been so happy, poor girl, so fond, so unsuspicious; and now...
Teresa turned towards him hastily.
“You will go in a smoker, Dane, won’t you? I am tired out. I expect I shall sleep all the way. Come for me at the Junction, in case I am carried on.”