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 got's a lovely bedside manner,” Lindsay remarked, “and that's the next thing to it.”
“Rubbish! I don't want to hurry you,” Alicia glanced at the watch on her wrist, “but unless you and Herbert want to miss half the first act you had better be off. Stephen and I will have our coffee comfortably in the drawing-room and find what excuses we can for you.”
But Stephen put out his hand with a movement of slightly rigid deprecation.
“If it is not too vacillating of me,” he said, “and I may be forgiven, I think I will change my mind, and go. I have no business to break up your party, and besides, I shall probably not have another opportunity—I should rather like to go. To the theatre, of course, that is. Not to Bonsard's, thanks very much.”
“Oh, do come on to Bonsard's,” Lindsay said, and Alicia protested that he would miss the best of Lady Dolly, but Stephen was firm. Bonsard's was beyond the limit of his indulgence.