Molly might have kept silent, but she did not want Adela, who was certainly watching them, to think her embarrassed.

“I suppose every one has moments of being bored.”

Edmund leant back and turned round so as to allow of his looking fully at her.  He muttered to himself:  “Young, beautiful, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice—­and bored!  What flattering unction that is to the soul of a ruined man.”

In spite of her anger, her indignation, her hurt pride, Molly was softened.  She writhed under the caress of his voice; it had power still.

“Are you not bored any more?” She spoke unwillingly.

“No,” he said, “suffering does not bore; discomfort does not bore; knowledge of your fellow-creatures does not bore.  But, of course, I am tasting the pleasures of novelty.  And I have not disappeared yet.  I think a boarding-house in Bloomsbury may prove boring.  How prettily our hostess will pity me, then.  But I don’t think I shall meet you here at dinner, and have the comfort of seeing for myself that you, too, are bored.”

Molly felt that he was putting her hopelessly in the wrong.  She was the one bitterly aggrieved and deeply injured.  But he made her feel as if coldness on her part would be just the conduct of any rich heartless woman to a ruined man.

“I calculate,” he said, “on about fifty more good dinners which I shall not pay for, and then, of course, I shall think myself well fed at my own expense in an Italian cafe somewhere.  I think Italian, don’t you?  Dinner at two shillings!  There is an air of spagghetti and onions that conceals the nature or age of the meat; and the coffee is amazingly good.  One might be able to find one with a clean cloth.”

Most of these remarks were made almost to himself.

“You know it isn’t true,” Molly said angrily; “you know you will get a good post.  Men like you are always given things.”

Edmund helped himself very carefully to exactly the right amount of melted butter.  “Don’t you eat asparagus?” he interjected, and, without waiting for an answer, went on: 

“I thought so too, but I can’t hear of a job.  There are too many of the unemployed just now.  However, no doubt, as you say, I shall soon be made absolute ruler of some province twice the size of England.”

He laughed and smoothed his moustache with one hand.

“Down with dull care, Miss Dexter; let us make a pact never to be bored—­in Bloomsbury, or West Africa, or Park Lane.  I suppose you found a great deal to do to that dear old house?”

After that their other neighbours claimed them both; but during dessert Molly, against her will, lost hold of the talk on her right, and had to listen to Edmund again.

“I hear that you have got the old Florentine looking-glasses from my sale.”

“I don’t think they were from your sale,” said Molly hastily.

“Well, Perks told me so.”