“Are you ready?” she asks, addressing the back of a man-person whom the first turn in the Park Road reveals kicking pebbles ahead of her in obvious waiting.
“Am I ready?” rejoins he, wheeling round, with good-tempered upbraiding. “You told me to be here at 5.30. It is now 7.15; and you ask, Am I ready?”
Lavinia wisely attempts no defence. “Well, are you?” she asks, smiling, but not coquettishly.
Of what use is it to be coquettish to a person in the same house, with whom you have always lived, and your engagement to be married to whom has had all the gilt taken off its gingerbread by the fact that you cannot remember the time when you were not engaged to him, and who is, to boot, your first cousin?
They walk on in silence for a few moments, she expecting and a little dreading to be questioned, and be confident that she will volunteer an explanation if he does not ask for one. But she refrains.
“Well, were they as good as usual? Have you no conversational plums to reward me with?”
Lavinia winces. Is this a moment to remind her of how often she has served up the pretensions and vulgarities of the family whom she has just quitted on such affecting terms for the joint amusement of herself and her fiancé?
“Don’t!” she answers hurriedly. “You do not know how you jar!”
He raises his eyebrows. “I know how cold I am,” he rejoins, still with perfect temper, “and I shall be very glad to know why I jar, if you will only tell me.”
“That is just what I can’t,” says she, wrinkling her forehead; “but you may take my word for it that you do. You ring dreadfully out of tune.”