"Friends, eh!" she mimicked him wickedly, plying her fan like a madwoman; "well I fancy I know what sort of friendship has made you look ten years older in half a year. Oh, Ricky, Ricky!"—she added with an abrupt change of feeling—"I'm sorry for you. I like you even when you are impertinent to me—and you know I do! But I—my heart is set on her marrying Sir Charles. You know it is. Could anything on earth be more suitable?—happier for her as well as for him? Isn't he a man where Langly is a—a toad, a cold-blooded worm!—a—a thing!
"I tell you my heart's set on it; there is nothing else interests me; I think of nothing else, care for nothing else——"
"Why?"
"What?" she said, suddenly on her guard.
"Why do you care for it so much?"
"Why? That is an absurd question."
"Then answer it without taking time to search for any reason except the real one."
"Ricky, you insolent——"
"Never mind. Answer me; why are you so absorbed in this marriage?"
She said with a calmly contemptuous shrug: "Because Sir Charles is deeply in love with her, and I am fond of them both."