“But, George, dear—”
“Now, now! I really do want to get into bed. Good-night, old lady.”
“Good-night, dear. But—”
“Let’s not talk of it any more,” he said. “It’s all right, and nothing in the world to worry about. So good-night, old lady. I’ll be polite enough to him, never fear—if we happen to be thrown together. So good-night!”
“But, George, dear—”
“I’m going to bed, old lady; so good-night.”
Thus the interview closed perforce. She kissed him again before going slowly to her own room, her perplexity evidently not dispersed; but the subject was not renewed between them the next day or subsequently. Nor did Fanny make any allusion to the cryptic approbation she had bestowed upon her nephew after the Major’s “not very successful little dinner”; though she annoyed George by looking at him oftener and longer than he cared to be looked at by an aunt. He could not glance her way, it seemed, without finding her red-rimmed eyes fixed upon him eagerly, with an alert and hopeful calculation in them which he declared would send a nervous man into fits. For thus, one day, he broke out, in protest:
“It would!” he repeated vehemently. “Given time it would—straight into fits! What do you find the matter with me? Is my tie always slipping up behind? Can’t you look at something else? My Lord! We’d better buy a cat for you to stare at, Aunt Fanny! A cat could stand it, maybe. What in the name of goodness do you expect to see?”
But Fanny laughed good-naturedly, and was not offended. “It’s more as if I expected you to see something, isn’t it?” she said quietly, still laughing.
“Now, what do you mean by that?”