The latter observation was addressed to the dog.
"I am suffering from hunger," observed Tony. "Do you think you can make any nice suggestion about lunch?"
The landlady paused reflectively.
"I can give you," she said, "some trout, a roast duckling, and marrow on toast."
Tony looked at her for a moment in speechless admiration. "My dear Miss Brown," he said, "that isn't a suggestion. That's an outburst of poetry." He turned to Isabel apologetically. "Roast duckling," he explained, "is one of the few things that make me really excited."
She laughed—a little gay, frank, natural laugh that Tony was delighted to hear. "I think all men are greedy," she said. "At least all the men I've ever known have been."
Tony nodded. "It's one of the original instincts of humanity," he observed thoughtfully. "We have to be greedy in self-defence. A man who isn't is bound to be beaten by a man who is. It's what Darwin calls the survival of the fattest." He turned back to the landlady who had been listening to him with a placid smile. "Send us a couple of cocktails into the dining-room, will you, Miss Brown," he said. "It would be wicked to rush at a lunch like that without any preparation."
All through the meal, which was served in a pleasant room looking out into a quaint old courtyard garden at the back, Tony kept the conversation in the same strain of impersonal philosophy. It was not until the marrow on toast had gone the way of all beautiful earthly things that he made any reference to Isabel's promised revelation.
"What do you say to having coffee outside?" he suggested. "There's a nice place where we can sit in the sun and you can tell me about your uncle. One should never discuss one's relations in a public dining-room."
Isabel contented herself with a nod, and after giving their instructions to the waiter, they strolled out through the open French window, and made their way to a rustic bench at the farther end of the garden.