“‘It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’” replies Lavinia, cheerfully, but with conscious effort, and with the feeling, often before experienced, that a good deal of physical fatigue attends living over the crater of Etna.”
“He calmed down after a while. I spent all the bad language I was master of, and wished it had been more, upon the whole Prince clan; and that did him good, so much so that he was able by-and-by to talk of something else.”
“Of what else?” The question is an idle one, and Miss Carew is conscious of it.
So is Rupert. “I expect that you know,” he answers quietly.
Never until to-day has Lavinia felt gêne in the presence of her lifelong playfellow and comrade, and that she should do so now strikes her as so monstrous an anomaly that it must be treated drastically.
“About our marriage, do you mean?” she inquires, taking the bull by the horns, and looking him full in the face.
“Yes.”
“H’m!” Struggle as she may, her lips can produce nothing more forthcoming than the monosyllable.
“He asked me whether the engagement still existed?”