“You think me fatuous, no doubt,” said Camelia, laughing too.
“Yes, rather fatuous. Not as clear-sighted as usual.”
“Mr. Rodrigg knows that I could never marry him,” said Camelia more gravely; “he can only hope for my smile, and, if he helps me through, I shall always smile.”
“I don’t credit Mr. Rodrigg with the faintest flavor of such humility.”
Camelia’s smile, confidently unconvinced, now shifted to a humorous little grimace. “He never really hoped. As though I could have married a man with a nose like that!”
“I maintain that he does so hope—despite his nose; an excellently honest nose it is too.”
“So broad at the tip! as though he had flattened it against adverse forces all his life. It is a plebeian trait, an inheritance from money-getting ancestors who held theirs conscientiously to the grindstone.”
“Mine should show the peculiarity,” and Perior rubbed it, “it has been ground persistently.”
“Ah—a merely acquired tendency; besides, you are not going to ask me to marry you—so you may carry your nose fearlessly.” Camelia’s eye, despite the light audacity of her tone, fixed him with a certain alert hardness.
Perior bowed, his hand on his heart. “Thanks for the intimation. I shall carry it quite fearlessly, I assure you.”