Cosimo had taken out his penknife and was scraping his nails, moodily running over items of disbursement as he scraped; and then the silence fell between them again.
It was Amory who broke it, and in doing so she turned her head for the first time. She gave her husband a look that meant that, though he might talk about expenses, she also had a subject.
"Walter was excessively stupid to-night," she said abruptly.
He said "Oh?" and went on scraping.
"At the best he's never a model of tact, but I thought he rather overstepped the mark at dinner."
Again he said "Oh?" and added, "What about?"
"His manners. His ideas are all right, I suppose, but I'm getting rather tired of his platform-tricks."
"His habit of illustration and so on?"
"And his want of tact generally. In fact I'm not sure it isn't more than that. In a strange house it would have been simply a faux pas, but he knows us well enough, and the arrangement between us. He might at any rate wait till he's called in."
Cosimo started on another nail.—"What arrangement?" he said.