He always says: "Be discreet; never speak to your Aunt or anyone but me of any of these things. They are just between us." He says that I am remarkably trustworthy, and that he could not live if he could not tell me about how things are going. He never seems to think of himself. He will sit for ten minutes looking at me without speaking, and suddenly say:
"Wait, wait! Just a little time and everything shall be yours. I will bring the world to you and lay it at your feet," and when he says it I almost believe it to be true for a moment.
It is only because his nerves are overwrought. (He is nervous to the verge of insanity sometimes.) It seems to me that I am the only one in the world who could possibly understand his temperament. He says I am. The other night we were at a small reception given by Mrs. Clews. He walked about the house all the time I was putting on my things. I knew that he was so nervous and excited over something that he could hardly control himself.
When we reached the Clews's he suddenly became another man. For an hour and a half he was calm almost to coldness. He was magnificent. Mr. Hildreth was there, and once while Edgar and I were talking together we saw him near us. Edgar had taken me a little aside, and was saying nothing, but allowing himself to relax for a moment from the strain under which I knew he was keeping himself. Suddenly he saw Mr. Hildreth, and his tone and attitude and manner changed completely. Where he had seemed almost like a tired, petulant child looking for comfort from me, he suddenly changed to a stern, masterful man without a trace of helplessness or nervousness.
He said: "This is as good a time as any," and excused himself and went over to Hildreth, and touched his arm. It seemed to me that Mr. Hildreth was positively deferential to him. It was no doubt my imagination, but they disappeared for a while, and when they returned, Edgar and I left.
He was his usual self—the self that others know, until we were outside. Then he became silent—preoccupied. I asked him what he wanted with Mr. Hildreth, and he laughed and said:
"A little matter of business—technicalities that you could not understand." There is a great deal that I cannot understand, and these things he never tells me about, because he says that if he annoyed me with these dry details, I would not listen to him at all by and bye. As though that were true!
When we reached home, he suddenly took me in his arms, and said: "How glorious you are! It would be nothing to me if you were not to share it with me."
He talks in such a wild fashion at times. I suppose he means all this honor and attention that he receives. Since it has become certain that his exertions are to carry through the railroad affair to the advantage of Thebes, he seems to have become a sort of god with the Thebans. I don't understand the business part of it very well, but I know that every one thinks that he has done a great thing for the town. When I speak of the gratitude that the people of Thebes should feel, he shrugs his shoulders and changes the subject. Once, he said in a sort of a passion:—"For heaven's sake never speak again of anything I seem to have done for Thebes."
This sensitiveness and modesty are constant with him in everything that he does—though the trait seems to be intensified now.