“Do you think your family would mind?”
“Mind?” He smiled. “We never interfere with one another’s affairs. It’s not like many families, I fancy. We take it for granted that nobody in the family could do anything not entirely right. So we take that for granted and it’s a jolly sensible arrangement.”
She turned her face on the pillow presently; the ice-bag 190 slid off; she sat up in her bathrobe, stretched her arms, smiled faintly:
“Shall I try again?” she asked.
“Oh, Lord!” he said, “would you? Upon my word, I believe you would! No more posing to-day! I’m not a murderer. Lie there until you’re ready to dress, and then ring for Selinda.”
“Don’t you want me?”
“Yes, but I want you alive, not dead! Anyway, I’ve got to talk to Westmore this morning, so you may be as lazy as you like—lounge about, read——” He went over to her, patted her cheek in the smiling, absent-minded way he had with her: “Tell me, ducky, how are you feeling, anyway?”
It confused her dreadfully to blush when he touched her, but she always did; and she turned her face away now, saying that she was quite all right again.
Preoccupied with his own thoughts, he nodded:
“That’s fine,” he said. “Now, trot along to Selinda, and when you’re fixed up you can have the run of the place to yourself.”