For the last fortnight Kit had been in a state of chronic exasperation with her tiresome brother-in-law. Toby was gauging his own gait, and Kit's efforts to make him march in time with her had brought no results. He was always to be found at the houses to which Lily went, and at those houses he was always talking to her. But Kit could not bring him to the point. Elsewhere his demeanour was absent and slightly idiotic; he appeared to have something on his mind, and dressed with unusual care. Thus, as they travelled down from London on the Saturday, Kit felt herself called upon to try to put the finishing touch to the work she flattered herself she had begun so well. She had not yet told him that the Murchisons were coming. She had, in fact, only asked them the evening before.
"Who is to be there?" asked Toby, as they left Paddington.
"Oh, the usual lot: Ted and the rest, and--oh yes, Mrs. Murchison and her daughter."
Toby looked fixedly out of the window with the idiotic expression on his face, and the dawnings of a very creditable blush. There was silence a moment, and Kit watched him from behind her paper. Toby turned and caught her eye.
Kit laid down the paper and began to laugh.
"And don't laugh," said Toby rudely; "it's all your fault."
"I should say it was Lily Murchison's," remarked Kit.
"Kit, will you be serious a minute?" said he. "I want to say things; I can't say them, you know, but you are clever--you will understand."
Kit laid her hand on his arm with a sympathetic pressure of her fingers.
"Dear Toby," she said, "I understand perfectly, and I am delighted--delighted! It is charming."
"Kit, I wish you had never told me to fall in love with her," he said; "it has spoilt it all. Of course, it is not in consequence of what you said that I have, but I wish you hadn't suggested it that evening at the Hungarian dance. That she is rich, and that the world knows it, stands in front of me. It is a vile world; it will say I fell in love with her only because of that. Oh, damn!"
Kit was divided between amusement and impatience.
"It has been reserved for you, Toby, to discover that riches are a bar to matrimony," she observed; "the reverse is usually believed to be the case."