Part 13 (1/2)

'One fancies she would make an encouraging second in a duel.'

'I will remember... when I call you out.'

'Oh, my dear lord, you have dozens to choose from leave me my one if we are to enter the lists.'

'We are, it seems; unless you consent to take the run to Paris. You are to say Tom or Rowsley.'

'The former, I can never feel at home in saying; Rowsley is Lady Charlotte's name for you.'

The name of Lady Charlotte was an invitation to the conflict between them. He pa.s.sed it, and said 'Durandarte runs a mile on the mouth, and the Coriola.n.u.s of their newspapers helps a stage-player to make lantern jaws. Neither of them comes well from the lips of my girl. After seven years she should have hit on a nickname, of none of the Christian suit.

I am not ”at home” either with ”my lord.” However, you send me off to Paris alone; and you'll be alone and dull here in this London.

Incomprehensible to me why!'

'We are both wondering?' said Aminta.

'You 're handsomer than when I met you first--by heaven you are!'

She flushed her dark brown-red late-sunset. 'Brunes are exceptional in England.'

'Thousands admiring you, of course! I know, my love, I have a jewel.'

She asked him: 'What are jewels for?' and he replied, 'To excite cupidity.'

'When they 're shut in a box?'

'Ware burglars! But this one is not shut up. She shuts herself up. And up go her shoulders! Decide to be out of it, and come to Paris for some life for a month. No? It's positive? When do you expect your little school friend?'

'After Easter. Aunt will be away.'

'Your little friend likes the country. I'll go to my house agents.

If there 's a country house open on the upper Thames, you can have swimming, boating, botanizing...'

He saw her throat swallow. But as he was offering agreeable things he chose to not understand how he was to be compa.s.sionate.

'Steignton?' she said, and did her cause no good by saying it feebly.

His look of a bygone awake-in-sleep old look, drearily known to her, was like a strip of sunlight on a fortress wall. It signified, Is the poor soul pus.h.i.+ng me back to that again?

She compelled herself to say: 'Your tenant there?'

'Matter of business... me and my tenant,' he remarked. 'The man pays punctually.'

'The lease has expired.'

'Not quite. You are misinformed.'

'At Easter.'

'Ah! Question of renewing.'