"Of course I will listen," said Lilias; and she added, "I have not heard from her for a long time, Philip. Wasn't she very wretched about it when you came away?"
A guilty colour came over Philip's face. He had looked a sort of orange brown before, but he now became a dusky crimson.
"I don't know what you mean," he said, "by she," and stared at Lilias with something like a challenge.
Lilias, for her part, opened her eyes twice as large as usual, and gazed upon him.
"You—don't—know! I think you must be going out of your senses," she said, briskly, with elder-sisterly intolerance. "Who should it be but one person? Do you think I am some one else than Lilias that you speak like that to me!"
"Indeed," said Philip, growing more and more crimson, "it is just because you are Lilias that I am here."
This speech was so extraordinary that it took Lilias an entire act to get over its startling effect, which was like a dash of cold water in her face. By the time the act was over, she had made out an explanation of it: which was that the something he had to tell her was something that only a listener so entirely sympathetic and well-informed as herself could understand. Accordingly, as soon as the curtain had fallen, she turned to him again.
"Philip, I am afraid it must be something very serious that has happened, and you want me to interfere. Perhaps you have quarrelled with her—but you used to do that almost every day."
"There is nothing about her at all—whoever you mean by her," Philip replied, with angry embarrassment, and a little shrinking from her eyes.
"Nothing about Katie! Then you have quarrelled?" Lilias cried. "I had a kind of instinct that told me; and that is why you are looking so glum, poor boy."