"You said she would be fat and coarse at forty."
Millicent Mervill caught his hands in hers. "You dear silly boy, so she will, both fat and complacent, but then I shall be thin and shrewish and shrivelled."
Michael laughed. "You are a tease!" he said good-naturedly.
"'The Rogue in Porcelain' used to be my name at school. But tell me—how long is that dark-haired girl going to stay with her brother?"
"I don't know," Michael said. "If she doesn't feel the heat, perhaps until he returns to England and the camp breaks up."
Mrs. Mervill clenched her pretty teeth. "And you expect me to be good and quiet and submissive and stay here?"
"I want you to be reasonable."
"That's out of the question—I very seldom am, and I am not going to be to please Miss Lampton, I can tell you!"
"Then what are you going to do?" He could not be hard on the woman for loving him; he wished he could help her and induce her to be reasonable. If she had been free, he would have felt himself bound to marry her.
"I will arrange something," she said. "I don't know what."