“Have you had a row over me?” he said quickly. “Of course, you couldn’t explain a thing like this to Gilbert.”
“You include him among the conventional duffers?” said his sister, with an enigmatic smile, patting Billie with one hand.
“Er—well—of course, he’s——”
“You’re quite right, my dear brother. He’s a conventional old duffer.” Then, with an abrupt change of key: “But, after all, as you say, we’ve only got one life and we must each decide for ourselves how we will live it. Live, love and be merry, for to-morrow we grow old!”
“By Jove, old girl, that’s the right spirit, and I really am awfully fond of Fay. And she’s gone on me, too.”
“You’ve been awfully in love with other girls before,” said Claudia running her fingers through her soft, loosened hair, “but you haven’t married them. How did it happen?”
He evidently concentrated on the subject for a moment before he answered:
“Blest if I quite know myself. I didn’t mean anything of the kind at first, because I knew that she ... I don’t know whether she put it in my head or I put it in hers.”
“You’re a very rich man,” said his sister softly.
“Yes, I know; and I daresay she wouldn’t have married me if I hadn’t had a good deal of oof.” Catching his sister’s look of surprise, he said quickly, “Oh! I don’t kid myself it was love, pure love. I don’t believe there is any such thing. And she’s as cute as they make them, only—she can be just the other way sometimes, too. She’ll interest you, Claudia, she really will. I bet you haven’t met anything like her before. You’ll find her a bit of a puzzle all right. But she’s got plenty of money of her own; she earns quite a big salary, she tells me, and though she lives in a sloppy sort of Bohemian way, there’s always plenty to it and no end of fluff and frills. Got plenty of jewellery, too, that—that admirers have given her. I want to replace it all one day.”