As Browne then made a rush to the piano, I lost no time in taking Edgar on one side under pretence of showing him an article in a review, and in unburdening myself to him with very little preface. I was in love, hopelessly in love. He guessed with whom at once, but did not understand my difficulty.
'She seems a modest, intelligent little girl; she has every reason to be grateful to you, even fond of you. Why should you be so diffident?'
I explained that she was beautiful, romantic, inexperienced; that her head was still full of silky-locked princes and moated castles, or with creatures of her fancy little less impossible; all sorts of dream-passions were seething in her girl's brain I knew, for I understood the little creature with desperate clearness of vision which only seemed to make her more inaccessible to me. If I could only conquer that terrible diffidence, that overwhelming awe that her fairy-like ignorance and innocence of the realities of life imposed upon me, I felt that I could plead my cause with a fire and force that would surmount even that ghastly obstacle of my hideous face; but then, again, fire and force were no weapons to use against the indifference of childlike innocence; and to ask her in cold blood to marry me without making her heart speak first in my favour would be monstrous. She had looked upon me till lately as she would have looked upon her grandfather, and this unsatisfactory affection had given place lately to a reserve which was even more unpromising. Edgar listened to me, did not deny the enormous fascination of a young mind one has one's self helped to form, but thought that I should resist it, and was rather indignant that I had not taken the opportunity of her father's visit to rid myself of mother and daughter together. He inclined to the idea that the two unlucky women were imposing on my generosity and were determined to make 'a good thing' out of me, and it was not until I had spent some time in explaining minutely the footing upon which we stood to one another that his prejudices began to give way.
At this point I perceived that Maurice Browne was playing at chess with Mr. Fussell, while Fabian had disappeared. When the game was over, they insisted on our joining them at whist. Before we had played one game I began to grow nervous at Fabian's long absence, and Mr. Fussell, who was my partner, took to leaning over the table as soon as I put down a card, and with one finger fixed viciously in the green cloth, and his starting eyes peering up into my face over his double eyeglass, saying in a sepulchral voice—
'Did you see what was played, Mr. Maude?'
I had trumped his trick, revoked, and done everything else that I ought not to have done before the missing Fabian came back in a tornado of high spirits, and with a tiny white Scotch rose at his buttonhole. Now there was only one Scotch rose-bush in the garden, and it grew by the porch of the cottage and was Babiole's private property. When the hand was played out I got Fabian to take my place, for my fingers shook so that I could not sort my cards.
While I had been arguing with Edgar the necessity of delicacy in making love to a young girl, Fabian had dashed into the breach, and now bore the trophy of a first success on his breast.
