"Good! Because you know me uncommonly well."
"No, not so very well," she said. "You're hard to know."
He took that as a compliment; probably most people would, since it seems to hint at something rare and out of the common; inaccessibility has an aristocratic flavour.
"Oh, I suppose we all have our fastnesses," he said with a laugh which politely waived any claim to superiority without expressly abandoning it.
"Doesn't one give up the key of the gates by marrying?"
"My dear Kate, read your Bluebeard again!"
Mrs. Raymore relapsed into the silence that was almost habitual to her, but it passed through her mind that the conversation had soon turned from Sibylla to Grantley himself, or at least had dealt with Sibylla purely in her bearing on Grantley; it had not increased her knowledge of Mrs. Imason as an independent individual.
"Well, with business what it is," said Fanshaw in his loud voice--a voice that had a way of stopping other people's voices--"we must cut it down somewhere."
"Oh, you're as rich as Crœsus, Fanshaw!" objected young Blake.
"I'm losing money every day! Christine and I were discussing it as we drove here."
"I like your idea of discussion, John," remarked Christine in her delicate tones, generally touched with sarcasm. "I couldn't open my lips."
"He closured you, and then threw out your Budget?" asked Grantley.
"He almost stripped my gown from my back, and made an absolute clutch at my diamonds."
"I put forward the reasonable view," Fanshaw insisted rather heatedly. "What I said was, begin with superfluities----"
"Are clothes superfluities?" interjected Christine, watching the gradual flushing of her husband's face with mischievous pleasure.
"Nothing is superfluous that is beautiful," said Selford; he lisped slightly, and spoke with an affected air. "We should retrench in the grosser pleasures--eating and drinking, display, large houses----"
"Peculiar dogs!" suggested Blake, chaffing Mrs. Selford.
"Horses!" said Christine, with sharp-pointed emphasis. "You should really be guided by Mr. Selford, John."
"Every husband should be guided by another husband. That's axiomatic," said Grantley.
"I'm quite content with my own," smiled Mrs. Selford. "Dick and I always agree."