"Oh," wailed Sibyl, "_why_ beat about the bush? You must have known that I always hoped if anything happened to poor Francis—and anything _might_ well have done so—after all, you or I might be in a railway accident or break our necks out hunting. In such case you _must_ have known I _counted_ on you ... I mean, on our being happy _at last_.... Don’t interrupt! ... And just think! Francis loved me awfully. I really _was perfectly sweet_ to him and did my duty to him _in every way_. His gratitude for that boy ... for a direct heir! ... Well, after Clithy was born he made his will! ... Don’t be silly ... and don’t joke about things I regard almost as sacred.... I mean _Francis_ re-made his will; and left me sole guardian of the boy and sole trustee, sole _everything_; and mistress for my life of Engledene, and of 6A, till Clithy came of age ... and a jointure of £10,000 a year to keep them up. Clithy has also the Silchester house which is let and which I intend to _keep_ let till he comes of age, the moors in Scotland _and_ the shooting lodge. Of course he has the reversionary rights of _everything_ after my death. And equally of course he has fifteen thousand a year, which I control till he is twenty-one or until he marries.... "Just _think_ what I could have done for you, out of all this—if you’d _waited_! If _only_ you’d waited!..." (buries her face in the mauve silk cushions and cries a little or pretends to). (Roger fidgets on his chair. An exquisite little purple Sèvres clock on the white mantelpiece ticks ... ticks ... ticks.) _Roger_: "Look here, Sibyl. You’re altogether on the wrong tack, believe me. You might have married me in ’86. I was quite ready then and fancied myself in love with you. But if you had we mightn’t have got on. My seven hundred a year would have been nowhere to give you surroundings like this...." (And he looks round the boudoir "done" in white, lavender, mauve and purple, with its exquisite bits of furniture, its velvet-covered armchair and Charles II day-bed, and pillow covers of mauve silk; and looked also at the sinuous figure of the woman coiled on the day-bed in her filmy black dress, with her face half buried in the silk cushions, and one disconsolate arm lying listlessly along her side, and at the magnificent rings of emeralds and diamonds on the pink fingers.) "You were _quite_ right: you could _never_ have stood the strain of Africa. I’ll tell you by and bye some of the things Lucy and I went through." (At this hint of comradeship with Lucy, the little black velvet shoes gave angry thumps on the frame of the day-bed.) "I know," continues Roger, "you used to throw out mysterious hints after you were married that I might wait till some far-off date when you were free; I mean after Lord Silchester was dead. But what decent man would have taken you at your word? Why, Silchester might well be alive now. He did not die of old age...."