"There they are, Cousin Chloe, exactly as I prophesied." "Well--why shouldn't they be?" "I didn't say anything about shoulds and shouldn't. I merely referred to facts.... Come--_say_ you think it ridiculous!" "I can't see why. Their demeanour appears to me unexceptionable, and perfectly dignified. Everything one would expect, knowing the parties...." "Are they going to walk about like that to all eternity, being unexceptionable? That's what I want to know?" "You are too impatient, dear!" "They have been going on for months like that; at least, it _seems_ months. And never getting any nearer! And then when you talk to them about each other, they speak of each other _respectfully_! They really do. He says she is a shrewd observer of human nature, and she says he appears to have had most interesting experiences. Indeed, I'm not exaggerating." "My dear Gwen, what _do_ you expect?" "Oh--_you_ know! You're only making believe. Why, when I said to him that she had been a strikingly pretty girl in her young days, and had refused no end of offers of marriage, he ... _What_ do you say?" "I said 'not no end.'" "Well--of course not! But I thought it as well to say so." "And what did he say to that?" "He got his eyeglass right to look at her, as if he had never seen her before, and came to a critical decision:--'Ye-es, yes, yes--so I should have imagined. Quite so!' It amounted to acquiescing in her having gone off, and was distinctly rude. She's better than that when I speak to her about him certainly. This morning she said he smoked too many cigars." "How absurd you are, Gwen! Why was that better?" "H'm--it's a little difficult to say! But it _is_ better, distinctly. There--they've heard us coming!" "Why?" "Because they both jumped farther off. They were far enough already, goodness knows!... Good evening, Percy! Good evening, Aunt Constance! We've had such a lovely drive home from Chorlton. I suppose the others are on in front." And so forth. Every _modus vivendi_, at arm's length, between any and every single lady and gentleman, was to be fooled to the top of its bent, in their service. The carriage was aware it was _de trop_, but was also alive to the necessity of pretending it was not. So it interested itself for a moment in some palpable falsehoods about the cause of the pedestrians figuring as derelicts; and then, representing itself as hungering for the society of their vanguard, started professedly to overtake it. It was really absolutely indifferent on the subject. "I suppose," said Miss Grahame enigmatically, as soon as inaudibility became a certainty, "I suppose that's why you wanted Miss Smith-Dickenson to come to Cavendish Square?"