‘Your tenant—this charming, unhappy, pretty girl, who, believe me, Wyndham’—growing suddenly grave—‘I regard as much as you do with the very deepest respect.’ Crosby has his charm.
‘You go too far,’ says Wyndham, looking a little agitated, however. ‘I am not in love with her, as you seem to imagine.’ Crosby smothers a smile, as in duty bound. ‘And, besides, even if I did desire to marry her, how could I do it? It would kill Shangarry with his queer, old-fashioned ideas.... A girl with no name.... And our name—so old.... It would kill him, I tell you. And—and besides all that, George, I don’t care for her, and she doesn’t care for me ... not in that way.’
‘Well, you are the best judge of that,’ says Crosby. ‘And if it is as you say, I am sorry you ever saw her. She has brought you into a decidedly risqué situation. And she is too good-looking to get out of it—or you either, without scandal.’
‘You have seen her?’ Wyndham’s face is full of rather angry inquiry.
‘My dear fellow, don’t eat me! We all saw her yesterday, if you come to think of it, in that tree of hers. You may remember that ass Jones’s remarks about a Hamadryad.’
‘Oh yes, of course. And you thought——’
‘To tell you the truth,’ says Crosby, ‘I thought her the very image of—don’t hit a little one, Wyndham! But I did think her more like Mrs. Prior than even Mrs. Prior’s own daughter is.’
‘What absurd nonsense! And yet, now I remember it, she—Ella—Miss Moore said she felt as if she had seen Mrs. Prior before.’
‘That’s odd. And yet not so odd as it seems. Many families totally unrelated to each other are often very much alike; I dare say Mrs. Prior and Miss Moore’s mother, though in different ranks of life, might have possessed features of the same type, and nature very similar, too. Same features, same manners, you know, very often.’
‘That ends the argument for me,’ says Wyndham, with a frown; ‘Miss Moore’s manners are as far removed from my aunt’s, and as far above them, as is possible.’