She gave him a quick glance. “It’s nice to hear the old name again.”
“No name ever suited a woman better. So you can live with the inhabitants of Dymfield without boring yourself to extinction? But of course you can. I never saw you bored.”
“Boredom is a modern disease, isn’t it? And you know I am not a modern woman.”
“Thank God!” he exclaimed with fervour. “The little woman whose pretty head I’ve been puzzling all the evening, suffers from it terribly, though.”
“Boredom? You’re very quick, François. You always were. Poor little thing!” she added with a sigh.
“Why? Doesn’t her husband amuse her?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s one of those unnecessary tragedies of life. They don’t try to understand one another. The material for happiness is all there, and they miss it. He’s a dear fellow. Kind, and good; and a scholar too, as of course you discovered.”
“Yes. You have one person at least with whom you need not talk in words of one syllable.”
“Words of one syllable are often the sweetest.”
He laughed. “You remind me of the lady from whose lips whenever she opened them, a flower fell. Your floors ought to be strewn with roses and violets by this time. But come! I don’t want to discuss your neighbours. I want to talk about you. Do you know that in ten years I have only seen you three times? And you must have been through Paris very often. What have you to say for yourself?”