"You'll let me talk to Esther?" I asked presently.
"I should like to talk to her myself," he answered, "only I'm such a fool at these things."
He lit another match.
"Look here," he went on, "I don't want you to tell me what you both think for a week—till I come back from Yorkshire. I'm too old for her, I know. But I seem to be pretty sound, and I—well, dash it all, Peter, you know her better than I do, although you—d'you know, by the way, that you rather put me off her in that last letter of yours?"
"Did I?" I asked. "Perhaps that was because I don't really know her so well."
"Well, first," he said, "there was that Lynn affair, of course. But that's dead, isn't it?"
"Quite," I told him; "and they've both gone out of mourning."
"And then," he went on, "you made me think of a rather up-to-date young woman, quite nice, of course," he looked at me apologetically, "but perhaps just a little bit self-complacent. Whereas I found in her, instead, everything that I've always worshipped most, you know—from rather a long way off."