“Why should I?” inquired Constance, changing colour a little though her voice was quiet.
“Because you are flirting with him, and no good can come of it,” Grace answered bluntly.
“Flirting? I?” The elder girl raised her eyebrows in innocent surprise. The idea was evidently new to her, and by no means agreeable.
“Yes, flirting. What else can you call it, I would like to know? He comes to see you—oh yes, you cannot deny it. It is certainly not for me. He knows I am engaged, and besides, I think he knows that I do not like him. Very well—he comes to see you, then. You receive him, you smile, you talk, you take an interest in everything he does—I heard you giving him advice the other day. Is not that flirting? He is in love with you, or pretends to be, which is the same thing, and you encourage him.”
“Pretends to be? Why should he pretend?” Constance asked the questions rather dreamily, as though she had put them to herself before and more than half knew the answer. Grace laughed a little.
“Because you are eminently worth while,” she replied. “Do you suppose that if you were as poor as he is, he would come so often?”
“That is not very good-natured,” observed Constance, taking up her book again. There was very little surprise in her tone, however, and Grace was glad to note the fact. Her sister was less simple than she had supposed.
“Good nature!” she exclaimed. “What has good nature to do with it? Do you think Mr. Wood comes here out of good nature? He wants to marry you, my dear. He cannot, and therefore you ought to send him away.”
“If I loved him, I would marry him.”
“But you do not. And, besides, the thing is absurd! A man with no position of any sort—none of any sort, I assure you—without fortune, and what is much worse, without any profession.”