e stared at him for a moment indifferently, as at a stranger, but he
could see the nervous movement of her fingers as she crumbed her bread.

"It is more likely," he answered, "that I should remember what I allude
to than that you should. We once had a talk about being bored. I said I
had never been bored while I was poor. Now I am poor again, so I
naturally remember, and, as you are trying the experience of being very
rich, I should really like to know if you are bored yet."

Molly might have kept silent, but she did not want Adela, who was
certainly watching them, to think her embarrassed.

"I suppose every one has moments of being bored."

Edmund leant back and turned round so as to allow of his looking fully
at her. He muttered to himself: "Young, beautiful, wealthy beyond the
dreams of avarice--and bored! What flattering unction that is to the
soul of a ruined man."

In spite of her anger, her indignation, her hurt pride, Molly was
softened. She writhed under the caress of his voice; it had power
still.

"Are you not bored any more?" She spoke unwillingly.

"No," he said, "suffering does not bore; discomfort does not bore;
knowledge of your fellow-creatures does not bore. But, of course, I am
tasting the pleasures of novelty. And I have not disappeared yet. I
think a boarding-house in Bloomsbury may prove boring. How prettily our
hostess will pity me, then. But I don't think I shall meet you here at
dinner, and have the comfort of seeing for myself that you, too, are
bored."

Molly felt that he was putting her hopelessly in the wrong. She was the
one bitterly aggrieved and deeply injured. But he made her feel as if
coldness on her part would be just the conduct of any rich heartless
woman to a ruined man.

"I calculate," he said, "on about fifty more good dinners which I shall
not pay for, and then, of course, I shall think myself well fed at my
own expense in an Italian cafe somewhere. I think Italian, don't you?
Dinner at two shillings! There is an air of _spagghetti_ and onions that
conceals the nature or age of the meat; and the coffee is amazingly
good. One might be able to find one with a clean cloth."

Most of these remarks were made almost to himself.

"You know it isn't true," Molly said angrily; "you know you will get a
good post. Men like you are always given things."

Edmund helped himself very carefully to exactly the right amount of
melted butter. "Don't you eat asparagus?" he interjecte