“I didn’t mean in appearance,” said Grahame. “Israel looks as if he had never had a trouble.”
The idea pleased me even more. Grahame’s criticism showed that I was playing my game with the right effect, and that the weeks of prostration following on the successful coup at Lowhaven had left no effect. Sibella, from her very nature, could not forbear giving me one or two glances with just enough of feeling in them to fill the atmosphere with a vague suggestion of sentimentality, but I behaved as if the very air she breathed was not to me love’s own narcotic. I fought fiercely against myself lest I should give the least sign that her power over me was supreme as ever.
“What lovely chocolates you used to bring me, Israel!”
I laughed buoyantly.
“Ah, but you remember the first Lionel brought you. They cost more.”
“As if I cared for that!”
Grahame laughed in his turn.
“As if, Sibella dear, you ever cared for anything else.”
Grahame had the most incomparable way of pointing out people’s faults to their faces without offence.
Sibella, however, looked angry.