What he really meant, though he did not know how decorously to say it, was that she must not think that he could be moved by any tall beauty, towards the splendour of whose possessions his revered grandmother might be driving him.
“I am not thinking anything,” cried Jane in answer. “But she is everything, and I am nothing. Just look at her—and then look at me, Tommy.”
“I'll look at you as long as you'll let me,” gulped Tommy, and he was boy enough and man enough to put a hand on each of her shoulders, and drown his longing in her brimming eyes.
. . . . .
Mary and Miss Vanderpoel were talking with a curious intimacy, in another part of the garden, where they were together alone, Sir Nigel having been reattached to Lady Alanby.
“You have known Sir Thomas a long time?” Betty had just said.
“Since we were children. Jane reminded me at the Dunholms' ball that she had played cricket with him when she was eight.”
“They have always liked each other?” Miss Vanderpoel suggested.
Mary looked up at her, and the meeting of their eyes was frank to revelation. But for the clear girlish liking for herself she saw in Betty Vanderpoel's, Mary would have known her next speech to be of imbecile bluntness. She had heard that Americans often had a queer, delightful understanding of unconventional things. This splendid girl was understanding her.
“Oh! You SEE!” she broke out. “You left them together on purpose!”