I should be there to keep them up to the mark?" she said, half
laughing. And then, "Well, yes--as you are going to Switzerland too. I
think you might have stayed and seen me married after all, and made
acquaintance with Phil."

"I thought I should have met him here to-day, Elinor."

"Now, how could you? You know the accommodation of the cottage just as
well as I do. We have two spare rooms, and no more."

"You could have sent me out somewhere to sleep. That has been done
before now."

"Oh, John, how persistent you are, and worrying! When I tell you that
Phil is shooting, as everybody of his kind is--do you think I want him
to give up all the habits of his life? He is not like us: we adapt
ourselves: but these people parcel out their time as if they were in a
trade, don't you know? So long in London, so long abroad, and in the
Highlands for the grouse, and somewhere else for the partridges, or they
would die."

"I think he might have departed from that routine once in a way, Elinor,
for you."

"I tell you again, John, I shall never put myself in competition"--Elinor
stopped abruptly, with perhaps, he thought, a little glimmer of
indignation in her eyes. "I hate women who do that sort of thing," she
cried. "'Give up your cigar--or me,' as I've heard girls say. Such an
unworthy thing! When one accepts a man one accepts him as he stands,
with all his habits. What should I think of him if he said, 'Give up
your tea--or me!' I should laugh in his face and throw him overboard
without a pause."

"You would never look at tea again as long as you lived if he did not
like it; I suppose that is what you mean, Elinor?"

"Perhaps if I found that out, afterwards; but to be given the choice
beforehand, never! After all, you don't half know me, John."

"Perhaps not," he said, gravely. They had left the garden behind in
its blaze of flowers, and strayed off into the subdued twilight of the
copse, where everything was in a half tone of greenness and shadow and
waning light. "There are always new lights arising on a many-sided
creature like you--and that makes one think. Do you know you are not at
all the person to take a great disappointment quietly, if that should
happen to come to you in your life?"

"A great disappointment?" she said, looking up at him with a wondering
glance. Then he thought the colour paled a little in her face. "No," she
said, "I don't suppose I should take it quietly. Who does?"

"Oh, many people--pe