"Yes, I could make you very sorry for me, if I wanted to." Her thoughts
ran thus. "But what's the use? You could only become an interminable
nuisance in trying to soothe my dying hours. You have just obstinately
squatted around in Lichfield and devoted all your time to being
beautiful and good and mooning around women for I don't know how many
years. You make me tired, and I have half a mind to tell you so right
now. And there really is no earthly sense in attempting to explain
things to you. You have so got into the habit of being beautiful and
good that you are capable of quoting Scripture after I have finished.
Then I would assuredly box your jaws, because I don't yearn to be a poor
stricken dear and weep on anybody's bosom. And I don't particularly care
about your opinion of me, anyway."

Aloud she said: "Oh, well! let's go and get some breakfast."

VII

And thus the situation stayed. Patricia told him nothing. And Rudolph
Musgrave, knowing that according to his lights he had behaved not
unhandsomely, was the merest trifle patronizing and rather like a person
speaking from a superior plane in his future dealings with Patricia.
Moreover, he was engrossed at this time by his scholarly compilation of
Lichfield Legislative Papers prior to 1800, which was printed the
following February.

She told him nothing. She was a devoted mother for two days' space, and
then candidly decided that Roger was developing into the most
insufferable of little prigs.

"And, besides, if he had never been born I would quite probably have
lived to keep my teeth in a glass of water at night. And I can't help
thinking of that privilege being denied me whenever I look at him."

She told Rudolph Musgrave nothing. She was finding it mildly amusing to
note how people came and went at Matocton, and to appraise these people
disinterestedly, because she would never see them again.

Patricia was drawing her own conclusions as to Lichfield's aristocracy.
These people--for the most part a preposterously handsome race--were the
pleasantest of companions and their manners were perfection; but there
was enough of old Roger Stapylton's blood in Patricia's veins to make
her feel, however obscurely, that nobody is justified in living without
even an attempt at any personal achievement. The younger men evinced a
marked tendency to leave Lichfield, to make their homes elsewhere, she
noted, and they very often attained prominence; there was Joe