“And you have sent him about his business. He tells me that you will not even see him. I don’t want to bother you, of course. A woman has a perfect right to choose her own husband, but Nigel seemed to think that there was something a little mysterious about your treatment of him. You seemed, he thought, to have some grievance which you would not explain and which he thought must arise from a misunderstanding. There, that sounds frightfully involved, doesn’t it, but perhaps you can make out what I mean. Don’t you care for Nigel at all?”
Anna was silent for a moment or two.
Lady Lescelles, graceful, very fashionably but quietly dressed, leaned back and watched her with shrewd kindly eyes.
“I like your brother better than any other man I know,” Anna said at last.
“Well, I don’t think you told him as much as that, did you?” Lady Lescelles asked.
“I did not,” Anna answered. “To be frank with you, Lady Lescelles, when your brother asked me the other day to be his wife I was under a false impression as regards his relations—with some other person. I know now that I was mistaken.”
“That sounds more promising,” Lady Lescelles declared. “May I tell Nigel to come and see you again? I am not here to do his love-making for him, you know. I came to see you on my own account.”
“Thank you very much,” Anna said. “It is very nice of you to come, but I do not think for the present, at any rate, I could give him any other answer. I do not intend to be married, or to become engaged just at present.”
“Well, why not?” Lady Lescelles asked, smiling. “I can only be a few years older than you, and I have been married four years. I can assure you, I wouldn’t be single again for worlds. One gets a lot more fun married.”