“We are a dull couple,” she returned, veering round instantly on the other tack; “unquestionably we are often dull—childless people must always be so—but if we admit this equivocal element into our lives, we may become something much worse than dull.”
“Then do not let us admit it.”
“On the other hand, there would to you at least be the undoubted advantage of the companionship of some one nearer your own age.”
He laughed softly, rallying her. “Felicity is foisting a young thing of five and thirty on us, then, is she?”
Camilla laughed also, a little unbending in her own grim way, but recapturing gravity and the argument almost instantaneously.
“Granting that she is eighteen or twenty in actual years, she is probably a hundred in experience of evil.”
“In short, you are afraid that she will take the bloom off our young innocence,” returned he, flying for refuge to irony, and resolutely leaving the room this time, followed by Jock, who, replete with tea, no longer saw any object in pretending that he liked his mistress best.
CHAPTER II
“The last day, and almost the last hour! I am thoroughly sorry,” said Felicity, and she was nearly sure that she meant it.
“Sorry is a weak word to express what I feel!” is the heartfelt answer. “Where should I have been now, I should like to know, but for you and Mr. Glanville?”