“I am very much interested in Cecil, altogether apart from his relationship to you, and personally I believe that I could help him. But, in any case, I want to do that. I’ve wanted to ever since I first knew the boy.”
“I know that.”
“It isn’t Cecil that’s the obstacle, then?”
“No.”
“But you don’t like me enough? I’m not asking for anything more to begin with.”
“I like you much better than most other people,” said Rose candidly. “But I don’t want to marry. I didn’t like it before, and I made a great hash of it.”
“I’d risk that.”
“But I wouldn’t,” said Rose.
They looked at one another rather helplessly.
“If I loved you,” she said at last, “it would be different. I do trust you, and I think you’d be good to my Ces. But it wouldn’t be worth doing, unless I really did care.”