No
sisters or brothers."
"Then you're an only child," she observed intelligently.
"Yes. And there's something about you that's exactly my idea of
a--of a family."
She was amused.
"So--cosy," he said, looking at her and searching for a word.
"You wouldn't think so if you saw my house in Hampstead," she
said, a vision of that austere and hard-seated dwelling presenting
itself to her mind, with nothing soft in it except the shunned and
neglected Du Barri sofa. No wonder, she thought, for a moment
clear-brained, that Frederick avoided it. There was nothing cosy
about his family.
"I don't believe any place you lived in could be anything but
exactly like you," he said.
"You're not going to pretend San Salvatore is like me?"
"Indeed I do pretend it. Surely you admit that it is beautiful?"
He said several things like that. She enjoyed her walk. She
could not recollect any walk so pleasant since her courting days.
She came back to tea, bringing Mr. Briggs, and looking quite
different, Mr. Wilkins noticed, from what she had looked till then.
Trouble here, trouble here, thought Mr. Wilkins, mentally rubbing his
professional hands. He could see himself being called in presently to
advise. On the one hand there was Arbuthnot, on the other hand here
was Briggs.
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