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Therefore, because it is so impossible to prolong in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon exhausted, the master and mistress of a country-house are apt to say, calmly, "You will be terribly bored here."
We are shut up together, tete-a-tete, which is so much the better or so much the worse. I am not going to get into another carriage, so don't you think it is preferable to talk as friends till the end of our journey?" She answered, quite calmly again: "Just as you please."
He lodged in a private house not far from Eve's Koutaizoff mansion; but passed the three months of his sojourn almost entirely in her society. It was the first opportunity he had had of getting to know her intimately, their previous meetings being surrounded with too many restrictions to allow of familiar intercourse. No detailed record has come down to us of these days of tete-a-tete existence.
She wrote to her, therefore, kindly, but decisively, to beg that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield; acknowledging it to be her conviction, that all farther confidential discussion of one topic had better be avoided; and hoping, that if a few days were allowed to pass before they met again, except in the company of others she objected only to a tete-a-tete they might be able to act as if they had forgotten the conversation of yesterday.
There was something very touching to Madame de Tecle in the reserved and timid manner of this 'mauvais sujet', in her presence the homage of a fallen spirit, as if ashamed of being such, in presence of a spirit of light. Never, either in public or when tete-a-tete, was there a jest, a word, or a look which the most sensitive virtue could fear.
"The fancy of a woman a present," thought Trevalyon. "But I must end this, for he won't. I am in no mood for trifling, I have again missed seeing Vaura. Mrs. Tompkins is charming in a tete-a-tete, but with the entree of a soldier on the war-path," and stepping towards his hostess he said gallantly: "So fair a foe, dear Mrs. Tompkins, surrounded by soldiers, is unfair; I beat a retreat.
Ruth blushed guiltily to herself when she got so far in her calculations; but it was such a delight to enjoy a quiet tete-a-tete talk sometimes, instead of the general impersonal conversation. So it came to pass that when Mollie announced her intention of going down to the vicarage to help in the final preparations, Ruth absolutely refused to accompany her. "I've done my share," she said.
Her disposition was peculiarly calculated to value a fond treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the more overcome by Miss Crawford's. Besides, there was gratitude towards her, for having made their tete-a-tete so much less painful than her fears had predicted. It was over, and she had escaped without reproaches and without detection.
Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors at table may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selected company one may sit beside a stupid man that is, stupid for the purpose of a 'tete-a-tete'. But this is not the worst of it.
But I was conscious of a growing difference in her manner towards me; sometimes strong enough to be called haughty coldness, cutting and chilling me as the hail had done that came across the sunshine on our marriage morning; sometimes only perceptible in the dexterous avoidance of a tete-a-tete walk or dinner to which I had been looking forward.
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