Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/173

 the third time. I have not the faintest remembrance of how it came to be so.

“Sometimes,” I continued, heavily, “I feel that I have made a mistake. Perhaps I should have been more of a success as a married man.”

Miss Berrith looked up with a little laugh.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Oh dear, no, Mr. Sands!”

I put my teacup on the table. It was empty again — for all the world like something out of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” — but I was too much irritated to give it more than passing notice. It was not that I had any desire to test my fitness for the part I had suggested — nothing was further from my thoughts— but it is not flattering to have one’s incapacity in any direction taken as a matter of course.

“I don’t see why you should say that so positively,” I replied. “I have the ordinary degree of intelligence, somewhat more than my