Thorpe nodded. “She made a tremendous impression upon me,” he observed, watching the father with intentness as he let the slow words fall.
“Well she might,” the other replied, simply. “She's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in England.”
“Well—I guess she is,” Thorpe assented, while the two men eyed each other.
“Is the third sister unmarried?” it occurred to him to ask. The tone of the question revealed its perfunctory character.
“Oh—Beatrice—she's of no importance,” the father replied. “She goes in for writing, and all that—she's not a beauty, you know—she lives with an old lady in Scotland. The oldest daughter—Blanche—she has some good looks of her own, but she's a cat. And so you met Edith! May I ask where it was?”
“At Hadlow House—Lord Plowden's place, you know.”
The General's surprise at the announcement was undoubted. “At Plowden's!” he repeated, and added, as if half to himself, “I thought that was all over with, long ago.”
“I wish you'd tell me about it,” said Thorpe, daringly. “I've made it plain to you, haven't I? I'm going to look out for you. And I want you to post me up, here, on some of the things that I don't understand. You remember that it was Plowden who introduced you to me, don't you? It was through him that you got on the Board. Well, certain things that I've seen lead me to suppose that he did that in order to please your daughter. Did you understand it that way?”
“It's quite likely, in one sense,” returned the General. He spoke with much deliberation now, weighing all his words. “He may have thought it would please her; he may not have known how little my poor affairs concerned her.”
“Well, then,” pursued Thorpe, argumentatively, “he had an object in pleasing her. Let me ask the question—did he want to marry her?”