“What’s the use? Your manners are quite all right. If you’d talk to people and collect ideas.... It’s so much more important to straighten out your ideas than to stand and hold a teacup properly. A butler can do that. I could train a navvy to do that. And—”
“That’s an awful good looking dress,” he broke in, “Nicest you’ve had on since I’ve been here.”
Olive let an arm trail on the mantel where the stone cooled it. “I’m talking about your intellect and you talk about my frock.”
“I know something about dresses and I don’t know a thing about intellect. You ought to wear dark things because you’ve got such a nice sk—complexion.”
“I don’t bother about clothes except when Jack’s at home and I want to keep his attention.... You were in Cuba, you said? Did you kill any one?”
“Don’t know. Tried to. Why?”
“I was wondering whether you’d mind killing an old duffer in Suffolk. He keeps my husband out of twelve hundred a year and a decentish house. Would you mind?”
Mark saw this was meant as a joke and laughed, studying her arm which gleamed white on the white stone.
“My husband’s uncle. He’s easily eighty and he’s very Tory.”
“Haven’t got any uncles. Got an aunt that’s pretty awful. She’s a Methodist.”