Page:The Sea Lady.djvu/194

 "Another time perhaps"

Had all these things really been said, or was he under some fantastic hallucination?

He had a sudden thought. "Where's your cigarette?" he asked.

But her cigarette had ended long ago.

"And what have you been talking about so long?" sang Mrs. Bunting, with an almost motherly hand on the back of Melville's chair.

"Oh!" said Melville, at a loss for once, and suddenly rising from his chair to face her, and then to the Sea Lady with an artificially easy smile, "What have we been talking about?"

"All sorts of things, I dare say," said Mrs. Bunting, in what might almost be called an arch manner. And she honoured Melville with a special smile—one of those smiles that are morally almost winks.

My cousin caught all the archness full in the face, and for four seconds he stared