She had never spoken to me like this in her life.
“That's nothing, my dear Agatha,” said I just a bit tartly, “to the time I've given myself. I'm sorry for you, but I think you ought to be a little sorry for me.”
“I am. More sorry than I can say. Oh, Simon, how could you?”
“How could I what?” I cried, unwontedly regardless of the refinements of language.
“Mix yourself up in this dreadful affair?”
“My dear girl,” said I, “if you had got mixed up in a railway collision, I shouldn't ask you how you managed to do it. I should be sorry for you and feel your arms and legs and inquire whether you had sustained any internal injuries.”
She is a pretty, spare woman with a bird-like face and soft brown hair just turning grey; and as good-hearted a little creature as ever adored five healthy children and an elderly baronet with disastrous views on scientific farming.
“Dear old boy,” she said in milder accents, “I didn't mean to be unkind. I want to be good to you and help you, so much so that I asked Bingley”—Bingley is my housekeeper—“whether I could stay to dinner.”
“That's good of you—but this magnificence——?”
“I'm going on later to the Foreign Office reception.”