It was their prerogative, of course: were they not cousins of the diseased?
Four or five days of uneasy pretence passed with a swiftness that irritated certain members of the party and a slowness that distressed the others.

Days never were so short as those which the now recklessly infatuated Brock was spending.

He was valiantly earning his way into the heart of Constance,--a process that tried his patience exceedingly, for she was blithely unimpressionable, if one were to judge by the calmness with which she fended off the inevitable though tardy assault.

She kept him at arm's length; appearances demanded a discreetness, no matter how she may secretly have felt toward the good-looking husband of her sister.

To say that she was enjoying herself would be putting it much too tamely; she was revelling in the fun of the thing.