"We shall see," Ophelia said pleasantly enough. There was no obvious reason to dislike Miss Blackwood, and so while she was hardly a bosom companion like Nova or Phyri, there was no particular cause for her not to be pleasant to the woman. She wasn't even old enough for Ophelia to reasonably start making comments about her lack of suitors, at least not for a few more years.

"You'd have to have a good measure of luck to best my wit," she continued jovially. "I'm quite good at this game, as it turns out."

Either that, or Mr. Echelon-Arnost had been letting her win. Since she was married and he was not the sort of man whose reputation would imply he was looking to flirt with married women, however, she thought that was probably not the case. Besides, she had been driving too much of the conversation for that sort of thing; if he'd been trying to flirt, he'd been doing a fairly poor job of it. Though perhaps that explained why he wasn't married yet — that, of course, and the whole dead-but-undead fiancee bit.