“Yes,” he replied. “I like her. For one thing, she’s genuinely concerned about that brother of hers.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Not much,” Lisle answered candidly. “I’ve no use for a man who needs a woman to keep him straight and look after him. But one feels a strong respect for the woman, even though it’s obvious that she’s wasting her time.”
“Is it wasting time?”
“It strikes me like that. A man of that sort is bound to come down badly some day.”
Millicent sat silent a while. The conversation had taken an unusually serious turn, but she wondered whether he were right. She had, she thought, allowed Clarence to assume that she would not repulse him when he formally claimed her and that—so this man from the wilds considered—constituted a binding obligation. She could not contest this view; but Clarence seemed more interested in Bella Crestwick than he was in her. Then she wondered why the girl had made so much of Lisle, unless it was to use him for the purpose of drawing Clarence on. If that were so, it seemed a pity that the confiding Canadian could not be warned, though that, of course, was out of the question.
“I’m afraid I’m not very amusing to-day,” she acknowledged.
He smiled.
“I’ll go the moment you want to get rid of me; but, even if you don’t say anything, I like sitting here. This place rests me.”
“I shouldn’t have imagined you to be of a very restful nature.”