“Are you going to plead his cause?” she asked lightly.
“Would it not be for your happiness?” Odd sat upright now, putting on his eyeglasses and looking at her with a certain air of resolution.
“I don’t love him.” Hilda returned the look sweetly and frankly.
“What do you know of love, you child? Why not have given him a chance, put him on trial? Nothing wins a woman like wooing.”
“How didactic we are becoming. I am afraid I should really get to loathe poor Lord Allan if I had given him leave to woo me.”
“I suppose you think him too unindividual, too much of a pattern with other healthy and hearty young men. Don’t you know, foolish child, that a good man, a man who would love you as he would, make you the husband he would, is a rarity and very individual?”
Odd found a perverse pleasure in his own paternally admonishing attitude. Hilda’s lightly amused but touched look implied a confidence so charming that he found the attitude sublimely courageous.
“I suppose so,” she said, and she added, “I haven’t one word to say against Lord Allan, except—“ She paused meditatively.
“Except what?” Odd asked rather breathlessly.
“He doesn’t really need me.”