"But then, no doubt, you enjoy her confidence." Tremayne flashed him a wry glance and looked away again.
"Alas!" he said, and fetched a sigh.
"And is Sylvia the temptation, Ned ?" Tremayne was silent for a while, little dreaming how Sir Terence hung upon his answer, how impatiently he awaited it.
"Of course," he said at last.

"Isn't it obvious to any one ?" And he grew rhapsodical: "How can a man be daily in her company without succumbing to her loveliness, to her matchless grace of body and of mind, without perceiving that she is incomparable, peerless, as much above other women as an angel perhaps might be above herself ?" Before his glum solemnity, and before something else that Tremayne could not suspect, Sir Terence exploded into laughter.

Of the immense and joyous relief in it his secretary caught no hint; all he heard was its sheer amusement, and this galled and shamed him.

For no man cares to be laughed at for such feelings as Tremayne had been led into betraying.
"You think it something to laugh at ?" he said tartly.
"Laugh, is it ?" spluttered Sir Terence.

"God grant I don't burst a blood-vessel." Tremayne reddened.