"I never get up early," returns Gervase. "You know that."
"Brandolin was in the home wood with Madame Sabaroff as we returned from church," remarks Dolly Usk. "They were together under a larch-tree. They looked as if they were on the brink of a quarrel or at the end of one: either may be an interesting rapprochement."
"I dare say they were only discussing some poet. They are always discussing some poet."
"Then they had fallen out over the poet. Poets are dangerous themes. Or perhaps she had been showing him your letters, if, as you seem to think, she carries them about with her everywhere like a reliquary."
"I never presumed to imagine that she had preserved them for a day."
"Oh, yes, you did. You had a vision of her weeping over them in secret every night, until you saw her here and found her as unlike a délaissé as a woman can be."
"Certainly she does not look that. Possibly, if Dido could have been dressed by Worth and Rodrigues, had diamonds as big as plovers' eggs, and been adored by Lord Brandolin, she would never have perished in despair. Autres temps autres m[oe]urs."
He speaks with sullen and scornful bitterness: his handsome face is momentarily flushed.
Dorothy Usk looks at him with inquisitiveness: she has never known him fail to rely on his own attractions before. "You are unusually modest," she replies. "Certainly, in our days, if Æneas does not come back, we take somebody else; sometimes we do that even if he does come back."
Gervase is moodily silent.