“Do you think I am blind?” asked Totty, almost indignantly. “Do you think Mamie does not know it as well as I do? After all these months of devotion! You must think me very dull—the only wonder is that you should not yet have told her so.”
George wondered why she took it for granted that he had not.
“What I should have to tell her would be very hard to say, as it ought to be said,” he answered thoughtfully.
Totty’s manner changed again and she turned her head towards him, lowering her voice and speaking in a tone of sincere sympathy.
“Oh, I know how hard it must be!” she said. “Most of all for you. To say, ‘I love you,’ and then to add, ‘I do not love you in the same way as I once loved another.’ But then, must one add that? Is it not self-evident? Ah no! There is no love like the first, indeed there is not!”
Totty sighed deeply, as though the recollection of some long buried fondness were still dear, and sweet and painful.
“And yet, one does love,” she continued a little more cheerfully. “One loves again, often more truly, if one knew it, and more sincerely than the first time. It is better so—the affection of later years is happier and brighter and more lasting than that other. And it is love, in the best sense of the word, believe me it is.”
If there had been the least false note of insincerity in her voice, George would have detected it. But what Totty attempted to do, she did well, with a consummate appreciation of details and their value which would have deceived a keener man than he. Moreover, he himself was in great doubt. He was really so strongly attracted by Mamie as to know that a feather’s weight would turn the scale. But for the recollection of Constance he would have loved her long ago with a love in which there might have been more of real passion and less of illusion. Mamie was in many ways a more real personage in his appreciation than Constance. Totty had defined the difference between the two very cleverly by what she had said. The more he thought of it, the more ideal Constance seemed to become.
But there was another element at work in his judgment. He was obliged to confess that Totty was right in another of her facts. During the long months of the summer he had undoubtedly acted in a way to make ordinary people believe that he loved Mamie. He had more than once shown that he resented Totty’s presence, and Totty had taken the hint and had gone away, with a readiness he only understood now. He had been very much spoiled by her, but had never supposed that she desired the marriage. It had been enough for him to show that he wished to talk to Mamie without interruption and he had been immediately humoured as he was humoured in everything in that charming establishment. Totty, however, and, of course, poor Mamie herself, had put an especial construction upon all his slightest words and gestures. To use the language of the world, he had compromised the girl, and had made her believe that he was to some extent in love with her, which was infinitely worse. It was very kind of Totty to be so tactful and diplomatic. Honest Sherry Trimm would have asked him his intentions in two words and would have required an answer in one, a mode of procedure which would have been far less agreeable.
“You owe her something, George,” Totty said after a long pause. “She saved your life. You must not break her heart—it would be a poor return.”