“I dare do all that becomes—a proper little girl,” said Mamie, laughing, “but not that.”
“Dear me! I had no idea that you were such a desperate character.”
“Tell me, George—if you did what I suggested yesterday and put us both into a book, Conny Fearing and me, which would you like best?”
“I would try and make you like each other, though I do not know exactly how I should go about it.”
“That is not an answer. It is of no use to be clever with me, as I have often told you. Would you like me better than Conny Fearing? Yes—or no! Come, I am waiting! How slow you are.”
“Which do you want me to say? I could do either—in a book, so that it can make no difference.”
“Oh—if it would make no difference, I do not care to know. You need not answer me.”
“All the better for me,” said George with a laugh. “Good-bye—I am going to work. Think of some easier question.”
George went away, wondering how it was all going to end. Mamie was certainly behaving in a very strange way. Her conduct during the visit on the previous afternoon had been that of a woman at once angry and jealous, and he himself had felt very uncomfortable. The extreme gentleness of her manner and expression while speaking with Constance had not concealed her real feelings from him, and he had felt something like shame at being obliged to sit quietly in his place while she wounded the woman he once loved so dearly, and of whom he still thought so often. He had done everything in his power to smooth matters, but he had not been able to do much, and his own humour had been already ruffled by the conversation that had gone before. He was under the impression that Constance had gone away feeling that he had been gratuitously disagreeable, and he was sorry for it.
Before very long, he had an opportunity of ascertaining what Constance felt and thought about his doings. On the afternoon of the Sunday following the one on which she had been to the Trimms’, George had crossed to the opposite side of the river, alone, had landed near a thick clump of trees and was comfortably established in a shady spot on the shore with a book and a cigar. The day was hot and it was about the middle of the afternoon. Mamie and her mother had driven to the neighbouring church, for Totty was punctual in attending to her devotions, whereas George, who had gone with them in the morning, considered that he had done enough.