“Not much,” murmured Celia, under her breath. She moved forward, and stood beside Edith, with an arm round her waist. They looked together at the lake.
“It is Lord Plowden, is it not?” asked the American, as the silence grew constrained.
Lady Cressage looked up alertly, and then hesitated over her reply. “No,” she said at last. Upon reflection, and with a dim smile flickering in her side-long glance at Celia, she added, “He wants to marry you, you know.”
“Leave that out of consideration,” said Celia, composedly. “He has never said so. I think it was more his mother's idea than his, if it existed at all. Of course I am not marrying him, or anybody else. But I saw at Hadlow that you and he were—what shall I say?—old friends.”
“He must marry money,” the other replied. In an unexpected burst of candour she went on: “He would have asked me to marry him if I had had money. There is no harm in telling you that. It was quite understood—oh, two years ago. And I think I wished I had the money—then.”
“And you don't wish it now?”
A slight shake of Edith's small, shapely head served for answer. After a little, she spoke in a musing tone: “He is going to have money of his own, very soon, but I don't think it would attract me now. I like him personally, of course, but—there is no career, no ambition, no future.”
“A Viscount has future enough behind him,” observed Celia.
“It doesn't attract me,” the other repeated, vaguely. “He is handsome, and clever, and kind and all that—but he would never appeal to any of the great emotions—nor be capable of them himself He is too smooth, too well-balanced, too much the gentleman. That expresses it badly—but do you see what I mean?”
Celia turned, and studied the beautiful profile beside her, in a steady, comprehending look.