“Yes, she is very unguarded,” said Myra with a sigh. “Of course he has known her since she was a child, and he was very good in helping her on when we were in Theophilus Skoot’s company. But she ought to be more careful, for there is no doubt that she was very much in love with him in the old days. You would be doing a good deed if you separated them a little.” She had not in the least intended to say anything of this sort, the words seemed put into her mouth, and somehow when once they were said she vehemently assured herself that she fully believed them. Not only so but she determined to act up to her belief.
“I never saw any one so fascinating,” said the Honorable Bertie, who was very badly hit indeed. “She’s a regular little witch. I assure you, Mrs. Brinton, I would marry her to-morrow if I were only lucky enough to have the chance. But she hasn’t a word to throw at me, and if she is not with the Denmeads, why she will stick like a leech to Miss Orme, and how is a man to make love to a girl when that’s the way she treats him? I wonder whether she still cares for that fellow Denmead? If so, couldn’t you give his wife a hint, then perhaps she would not have so much to do with her and I might possibly stand a chance of getting a hearing.”
“Well,” said Myra, rather startled by this suggestion. “I could do that if you like, but of course, it would lead to a quarrel between them.”
“Oh, never mind what it leads to,” said Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes. “It will at least give me a fair chance with her. Isn’t it hard, Mrs. Brinton, that when a fellow doesn’t care a straw the girls are all dying for love of him, and when at last he does care why the fates ordain that he shall fall in love with a girl who—well—who doesn’t care a straw for him.”
Myra could have found it in her heart to laugh at this lame ending, and at the sudden reversal of fortune which had so greatly depressed the earl’s son, but after all there was something genuine about the poor fellow that touched her: for the time Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes really was very much in love with Ivy. It was the sort of passion that might possibly exist for about six months, it might even prove to be a “hardy annual,” but it was certainly not a passion of the perennial sort.
She promised that she would do her best for him.
“If he is an empty-headed fellow,” she reflected, “he is at least rich and well-connected. It would be a remarkably good marriage for Ivy Grant, and I will do what I can to further it.”