On which the speaker, with a flickering smile and tear-dashed eyes, had taken Delia's face in her two slender hands—
"And don't be such a fool, dear, as to imagine there's been anything in it, ever, but the purest friendship and good-heartedness that ever bound three people together! My greatest joy would be to see him married—to a woman worthy of him—if there is one! And he I suppose will find his reward in marrying Nora—to some nice fellow. He begins to match-make for her already."
Delia slowly withdrew herself.
"And he himself doesn't intend to marry?" She asked the question, clasping her long arms round her knees, as she sat on the floor, her dark eyes—defiantly steady on her guest's face.
Lady Tonbridge could hear her own answer.
"L'homme propose! Let the right woman try!" Whereupon Delia, a delicious figure, in a slim white dressing-gown, a flood of curly brown hair falling about her neck and shoulders, had sprung up, and bidden her guest a hasty good-night.
One other small incident she recalled.
A propos of some anxious calculation made by Winnington's sister Alice Matheson one day in talk with Lady Tonbridge—Delia being present—as to whether Mark could possibly afford a better motor than the "ramshackle little horror" he was at present dependent on, Delia had said abruptly, on the departure of Mrs. Matheson—
"But surely the legacy my father left Mr. Winnington would get a new motor!"
"But he hasn't taken it, and never will!" Lady Tonbridge had cried, amazed at the girl's ignorance.