“You don’t mean—what you referred to on the Lido?” I asked, raising my brows and passing my hand across my jugular vein.
“Oh, no! That would be something real. His will be a performance of some sort. It’s ten days since he poured all his bank notes on the table before me, and swore he’d burn them and kill himself if I didn’t pick them up. Of course he hasn’t done either! He’s locked them up again, and he’s trying to get you to persuade me to see reason—in the way he sees it!”
“But I’ve told him that—I’ve told what I think of him—or as good as!”
“Well, as soon as he’s convinced this plan won’t work, he’ll try another. You’ll see!” She smiled again. “I shouldn’t wonder if the arrival of Godfrey Frost were to produce some manifestation, some change in his campaign.”
It was almost the first—I am not sure that it was not absolutely the first—time that she had referred to Godfrey. Though I felt considerable curiosity about her feelings with regard to that young man, I had forborne to question her. Whatever he might be in himself, he was friend, partner, kinsman to Nina Dundrannan. The subject might not be agreeable.
“What’s that young man coming here for?” I asked.
Something in my tone evidently amused her. She laid her work down beside her, drew her chair nearer the fire, and stretched out her legs towards the blaze. She was thoughtful as well as amused, questioning herself as well as talking to me; it was quite in her old fashion.
“I liked him; he amused me—and it amused me. He’s Nina, isn’t he? Nina writ large and clumsily? What she is delicately, he is coarsely. Oh, well, that’s rather a hard word, perhaps. I mean, obviously, insistently. Where she carries an atmosphere, he works an air pump. Still I liked him; he was kind to me; he gave me treats—as you did. And it was fun poaching on Nina’s preserves. After all, she didn’t have it all her own way when we met at Cimiez!”
“She’s not having it now, I should imagine—since he’s coming to Venice.”
“I like treats, and I like being admired, and I liked the poaching,” Lucinda pursued. “He gave me all that. And he really was generously indignant at my having to earn an honest living—no, having to earn a poor living, I mean.”