'Decency suggests that we should feign some sorrow even if we feel it not.'
'It suggests to me nothing of the kind. The moment the Marquis of Twickenham's death is announced I shall rejoice--for Reggie's sake, and yours.'
'I see. And not at all for your own?'
'Also a little for my own. And Edith. For all our sakes, indeed.' I had taken up my position before the fireplace: she planted herself in front of me. 'Douglas, what has come to you upon a sudden? Here's the news for which you have been waiting arrived at last, and you look as black as black can be, and speak so crossly that I hardly know you for yourself.'
'You arrive too rapidly at your conclusions. I have grown so weary of expecting what never comes that my sense of anticipation's dulled. The man's not died these fifteen years; why should he die now?'
'Because he says he's going to: and I tell you that, this time, what he says he means.'
Turning aside, I looked down at the flaming coals. Her words and manner jarred on me alike.
'I don't like to think, and I don't like to know you think that, for us, the only hope of life is--death.'
'Douglas, what is the mood that's on you? Don't you want the man to die?'
Asked thus bluntly, I found myself hard put to it for an answer. After all, it was doubtful if I was not sorry that I had set out on this adventure. Never before had I felt myself so out of harmony with what was in my sister's heart. Obviously the riddle of my mood was beyond her finding out. She gave a little twirl of her skirts, as if dismissing from her mind all efforts to understand me.