"No," she answered, "it is not sleeves. One's difficulty is to decide what it is. A week ago I thought it was her voice. Yesterday I was sure it was her eyelashes and the soft shadow they make about her eyes. About an hour ago I was convinced it was her smile, and now I think it must be her power of fixing her attention upon you. See how it flatters Mr. Arbuthnot, and how, though he is conscious of his weakness, he succumbs to it. It will be very pleasant occupation during the winter to watch his struggles."
"Will he struggle?" said Tredennis, still immovably. "I don't think I would in his place."
"Oh, no," she answered. "You mustn't struggle."
"I will not," he returned.
She went on with a smile, as if he had spoken in the most responsive manner possible.
"Mr. Arbuthnot's struggles will not be of the usual order," she remarked. "He will not be struggling with his emotions, but with his vanity. He knows that she will not fall in love with him, and he has no intention of falling in love with her. He knows better—and he does not like affairs. But he will find that she is able to do things which will flatter him, and that it will require all his self-control to refrain from displaying his masculine delight in himself and the good-fortune which he has the secret anguish of knowing does not depend upon his merits. And his struggles at a decently composed demeanor, entirely untinged by weak demonstrations of pleasure or consciousness of himself, will be a very edifying spectacle."
She turned her glance from Arbuthnot and Mrs. Sylvestre, whom she had been watching as she spoke, and looked up at Tredennis. She did so because he had made a rather sudden movement, and placed himself immediately before her.
"Bertha," he said, "I am going away."
Her Jacqueminot roses had been lying upon her lap. She picked them up before she answered him.
"You have made too many calls," she said. "You are tired."