PASCOE. Indeed!

CARVE. Yes. We met an English lady in a village in Andalusia, and--well,
of course, I can't tell you everything--but she flirted with him and he
flirted with her.

PASCOE. Under his own name?

CARVE. Yes. And then he proposed to her. I knew all along it was a
blunder.

PASCOE. (Ironic.) Did you?

CARVE. Yes. She belonged to the aristocracy, and she was one of those
amateur painters that wander about the Continent by themselves--you
know.

PASCOE. And did she accept?

CARVE. Oh yes. They got as far as Madrid together, and then all of a
sudden my esteemed saw that he had made a mistake.

PASCOE. And what then?

CARVE. We fled the country. We hooked it. The idea of coming to London
struck him--just the caprice of a man who's lost his head--and here we
are.

PASCOE. (After a pause.) He doesn't seem to me from the look of him to
be a man who'd--shall we say?--strictly avoided women.