"Fancy!" she breathed again. "I must tell them when I go home. They don't know it, you know." She added, in a slight change of key: "I'm so glad Hugh is going to have a wife like you."
It was on my tongue to say, "He'd be much better off with a wife like you"; but I made it:
"What do you think it will do for him?"
"It will bring him out. Hugh is splendid in his way—just as you are—only he needs bringing out, don't you think?"
"He hasn't needed bringing out in the last ten months," I declared, with some emphasis. "See what he's done—"
"And yet he didn't pull it off, did he? You managed that. You'll manage a lot of other things for him, too. I must go back to the others," she continued, getting up. "They're waiting for me to make up the set. But I wanted to tell you I'm—I'm glad—without—without any—any reserves."
I think there were tears in her narrow eyes, as I know there were in my own; but she beat such a hasty retreat that I could not be very sure of it.
Mildred Brokenshire was a surprise to me. I had hardly ever seen her till she sent for me in order to talk about Hugh. I found her lying on a couch in a dim corner of her big, massively furnished room, her face no more than a white pain-pinched spot in the obscurity. After having kissed me she made me sit at a distance, nominally to get the breeze through an open window, but really that I might not have to look at her.
In an unnaturally hollow, tragic voice she said it was a pleasure to her that Hugh should have got at last the woman he loved, especially after having made such a fight for her. Though she didn't know me, she was sure I had fine qualities; otherwise Hugh would not have cared for me as he did. He was a dear boy, and a good wife could make much of him. He lacked initiative in the way that was unfortunately common among rich men's sons, especially in America; but the past winter had shown that he was not deficient in doggedness. She wondered if I loved him as much as he loved me.
There was that in this suffering woman, so far withdrawn from our struggles in the world outside, which prompted me to be as truthful as the circumstances rendered possible.