Eleanor becomes momentarily more conscience-stricken; the sight of the "relics" are hateful to her.
"I want to throw all this rubbish away," she cries at last. "It will only be a worry to me."
"Very true," replies her husband.
"I know," a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "Let me shy them out on the road, and someone will think they have discovered real curiosities."
She stands up in childish glee, casting back a mocking smile at Herbert Dallison. One by one she flings his gifts from her, with an expressive look signifying second thoughts are best. He has taken his friends into his confidence, and is horrified at the hilarious laughter which breaks from them at Eleanor's act.
"Hang it all," he mutters, "it's beastly ungrateful; can't buy that sort of rot for nothing."
But he is too proud to stop and recover his property; so a bullet, a cap, and a sword are left by the wayside like the seed that was not good, to pass into strange hands.
"Moral," cries Bertie's pal, slapping him on the back, "don't interfere with honeymoon couples, they're abominably slow. Stick to widows, old man, for the future."
At the word "widow" Bertie actually blushes. There is more sting in this light chaff than his comrades suppose, for the vision of a villa at Richmond with its dark-haired divinity rises between the dust of the two carriages, soothing his ruffled feelings and drowning Eleanor's fair form in the seas of forgetfulness.
The honeymoon slips by pleasantly.