“Like a friend of mine—people weren’t so polite forty years ago, and much more amusing—who, when his neighbour made some very foolish remark, shouted at her: ‘Go on with your soup, madam!’”
“Tell me who else is coming,” said Frank.
“Mrs. Castillyon, but she’ll be monstrously late. She thinks it fashionable, and the County in London has to take so many precautions not to seem provincial. Mrs. Murray is coming.”
“D’you still want me to marry her?”
“No,” replied Miss Ley, laughing, “I’ve given you up. Though it wasn’t nice of you to abuse me like a pickpocket because I offered you a handsome widow with five thousand a year.”
“Think of the insufferable bore of marriage, and in any case Heaven save me from an intellectual wife. If I marry at all, I’ll marry my cook.”
“I wish you wouldn’t make my jokes, Frank. . . . But as a matter of fact, unless I’m vastly mistaken, Mrs. Murray has made up her mind to marry our friend Basil.”
“Oh!” said Frank.
Miss Ley noticed a shadow cross his eyes, and examined his expression sharply.
“Don’t you think it would be a very suitable thing if she did?”