We were going to the Grand Hotel, and driving there he pumped up a few perfunctory sort of questions about school, the way grown-up people who don't understand children talk to little girls. You know: "Do you like your lessons? What do you do on holidays? What is your middle name?" sort of thing. I was afraid I should laugh, so I asked him questions instead; and all the time he seemed to be studying me in a puzzled, surprised way, as if I were a duck that had just stepped out of a chicken egg, or a goblin in a Nonconformist home. (If he keeps on doing this, I shall have to find out what he means by it, or burst.)
I asked him about his sister, as I thought Bengal might be a sore subject, and he appeared to think that I already knew something of her. If Ellaline does know, she forgot to tell me; and I hope other things like that won't be continually cropping up, or my nerves won't stand it. I shall take to throwing spoons and tea-cups.
He reminded me of her name being Mrs. Norton, and that she's a widow. He hadn't expected her to come over, he said, and he was surprised to get her telegram, but no doubt he'd find out that she'd a pretty good reason. And it was nothing to be astonished at, her not meeting him at the Gare de Lyon, for she invariably missed people when she went to railway stations. It had been a characteristic of hers since youth. When they were both young they were often in Paris together, for they had French cousins (Ellaline's mother's people, I suppose), and then they stopped at the Grand Hotel. He hadn't been there, though, he added, for nearly twenty years; and had been out of England, without coming back, for fifteen. That made him seem old, talking of what happened twenty years ago—almost my whole life. Yet he doesn't look more than thirty-five at most. I wonder does the climate of Bengal preserve people, like flies in amber? Perhaps he's really sixty, and has this unnatural appearance of youth.
"Does Mrs. Norton know about—me?" I asked.
"Why; of course she does," said he. "I wrote her she must come and live with me when I found I'd got to have——" He shut up like a clam, on that, and looked so horribly ashamed of himself that I burst out laughing.
"Please don't mind," said I. "I know I'm an incubus, but I'll try to be as little trouble as possible."
"You're not an incubus," he contradicted me, almost indignantly. "You're entirely different from what I thought you would be."
"Oh, then you thought I would be an incubus?" I couldn't resist the temptation of retorting. Maybe it was cruel, but there's no society for the prevention of cruelty to dragons, so it can't be considered wrong in humane circles.
"Not at all. But I—I don't know much about women, especially girls," said he. "And I told you I thought of you as a child."
"I hope you haven't gone to the trouble of engaging a nurse for me?" I suggested. And if he were cross at being teased, he didn't show it. He said he'd trusted all such arrangements to his sister. He hadn't seen her for many years, but she was good-natured, and he hoped that we would get on. What I principally hoped was that she wouldn't prove to be of a suspicious nature; for a detective on the hearth would be inconvenient, and women can be so sharp about each other! I've found that out at Madame de Maluet's; I never would from you, dear. You weren't a cat in any of your previous incarnations. I think you must have "evoluted" from that neat blending of serpent and dove which eventually produces a perfect Parisienne.