"I did. I told you I couldn't imagine."
"It's for a most saintly, really nice reason. Guess."
"I can't guess."
"Oh but try."
Priscilla to her extreme disgust felt herself turning very red. "I suppose to spy out the nakedness of the land," she said severely.
"Now you're picturesque again. You must have been reading a tremendous lot lately. Of course you would, with that learned old fossil about. No my dear, I've come simply to see if you are happy."
She looked at him, and her flush slowly died away.
"Simply to convince myself that you are happy."
Her eyes filling with tears she thought it more expedient to fix them on the table-cloth. She did fix them on it, and the golden fringe of eyelashes that he very rightly thought so beautiful lay in long dusky curves on her serious face. "It's extraordinarily nice of you if—if it's true," she said.
"But it is true. And if you are, if you tell me you are and I'm able to believe it, I bow myself out, dear cousin, and shall devote any energies I have left after doing that to going on muzzling your father. He shall not, I promise you, in any way disturb you. Haven't I kept him well in hand up to this?"