“Why did you start her off like this by talking of motor-cars?”
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Quixtus. “But how was I to know?”
“Just like a man,” she retorted. “No intuition worth a cent.”
At dinner, a melancholy meal—theirs was the only table occupied in the vast, ghostly salle à manger—she apologised, in her gruff way.
“I was wrong about the motor-car. How the deuce could you have known? Besides, if you talked to the child about triple-expansion boiler, her daddy would be sure to have had one at Shanghai. Poor little mite!”
“Yes, poor little mite,” said Quixtus, meditatively. “I wonder what will become of her.”
“That has got to be our look-out,” she replied sharply. “You don’t seem to realise that.”
“I don’t think I do quite—even after what you said to me yesterday. I must accustom myself to the idea.”
“Yesterday,” said Clementina, “you declared that you had fallen in love with her.”
“Many a man,” replied Quixtus with a faint smile, “has fallen in love with one of your sex and has not in the least known what to do with her.”