“Oh, undoubtedly. May I—might I ask for a little more soda-water, Alicia?” He made the request so formally that she glanced at him with surprise.
“Please do—but isn't it very odious, by itself, that way? I suppose we shouldn't leave out Hamilton Bradley—he certainly counts.”
“For how much?” inquired her brother. “He's going to pieces.”
“Hilda can pull him together again,” Lindsay said incautiously.
“Has she an influence for good—over him?” Stephen inquired, and cleared his throat. He caught a glance exchanged, and frowned.
“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-Lieut.-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.