‘Poverty, I can only suppose. But I will see Whelpdale. I hadn’t come across Biffen for a long time.’
‘Was he still so very poor?’ asked Amy, compassionately.
‘I’m afraid so. His book failed utterly.’
‘Oh, if I had imagined him still in such distress, surely I might have done something to help him!’—So often the regretful remark of one’s friends, when one has been permitted to perish.
With Amy’s sorrow was mingled a suggestion of tenderness which came of her knowledge that the dead man had worshipped her. Perchance his death was in part attributable to that hopeless love.
‘He sent me a copy of his novel,’ she said, ‘and I saw him once or twice after that. But he was much better dressed than in former days, and I thought—’
Having this subject to converse upon put the two more quickly at ease than could otherwise have been the case. Jasper was closely observant of the young widow; her finished graces made a strong appeal to his admiration, and even in some degree awed him. He saw that her beauty had matured, and it was more distinctly than ever of the type to which he paid reverence. Amy might take a foremost place among brilliant women. At a dinner-table, in grand toilet, she would be superb; at polite receptions people would whisper: ‘Who is that?’
Biffen fell out of the dialogue.
‘It grieved me very much,’ said Amy, ‘to hear of the misfortune that befell my cousin.’
‘The legacy affair? Why, yes, it was a pity. Especially now that her father is threatened with blindness.’