"Oh, yes," Duff said, "I fancy it is for good. For good, certainly. The odd part of it is that he began by having an influence over her which she declares improved her acting. So that was for good, too, as it turned out. I think she makes too much of him. To my mind, he speaks like a bit of consecrated stage tradition and looks like a bit of consecrated stage furniture—he, and his thin nose, and his thin lips, and his thin eyebrows. Personally, I'm sick of his eyebrows."
"They'll end by marrying," said Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Livingstone.
"Herbert! How little you know her!"
"It's possible enough," Duff said, "especially if she finds him in any way necessary to her production of herself. Hilda has knocked about too much to have many illusions. One is pretty sure she would place that first."
"You are saying a thing which is monstrous!" cried Alicia.
Unperturbed, her brother supported his conviction. "She'll have to marry him to get rid of him," he said. "Fancy the opportunities of worrying her the brute will have in those endless ocean voyages!"
"Oh, if you think Hilda could be worried into anything!" Miss Livingstone exclaimed derisively. "If the man were irritating, do you suppose she wouldn't arrange—wouldn't find means—?"
"She would have him put in irons, no doubt," Herbert retorted, "or locked up with the other sad dogs, in charge of the ship's butcher."
The three laughed immoderately, and Stephen, looking up, came in at the end with a smile. Alicia pronounced her brother too absurd, and unfitted by nature to know anything about creatures like Hilda Howe. "A mere man to begin with," she said. "You haven't the ghost of a temperament, Herbert, you know you haven't."
"He's got a lovely bedside manner," Lindsay remarked, "and that's the next thing to it."