'Oh, him or I began, I don't 'xactly remember, but we talked about
pretty persons, and he said he was glad he wasn't a pretty person,
because they were nearly always nasty, and then I said they weren't,
'cos there's mother and you, and I said you're always pretty.'

'And what did he say?' asks Lippa.

'He said,' replies Teddy, in the gruffest voice he can assume, trying to
imitate Jimmy, '"More's the pity," and now you see I can just tell him
you don't look pretty a bit, when you're holding somebody in your arms.'

'You must not say anything of the kind,' says she; it would be useless
to exact a promise from him, probably be the way to make him repeat the
conversation word for word; but Philippa has found out what she wanted
to know, namely, that Jimmy is in London, and it causes her for the
moment exquisite pain, to feel that he is not so far away, for though
the Metropolis is a large place, there is always the chance of meeting
one's friends in the street.

After deep thought Philippa has made up her mind to tell no one, of all
she has heard and of all that has happened in consequence. She can rely
on Ponsonby keeping secret the little he knows of it; but what is
hardest to bear is the having nothing to look forward to, for the future
looks, oh, so dark and dreary. Sometimes she feels that it cannot be
true, and she shrinks with horror from the remembrance of the fate that
may be awaiting her. But Mabel does not notice that something has
changed her; that her step is not so light as it was, or her laugh so
gay. How little we know of each other, although living the same lives,
seeing the same people and things; we have all got an inner existence