He turned the case over. “I’m afraid I can’t explain Mrs. Headway,” he concluded.
“I see you admit she’s very peculiar.”
Even to this, however, he hesitated to commit himself. “It’s too great a responsibility to answer you.” He allowed he was very disobliging; he knew exactly what Lady Demesne wished him to say. He was unprepared to blight the reputation of Mrs. Headway to accommodate her; and yet, with his cultivated imagination, he could enter perfectly into the feelings of this tender formal serious woman who—it was easy to see—had looked for her own happiness in the observance of duty and in extreme constancy to two or three objects of devotion chosen once for all. She must indeed have had a conception of life in the light of which Nancy Beck would show both for displeasing and for dangerous. But he presently became aware she had taken his last words as a concession in which she might find help.
“You know why I ask you these things then?”
“I think I’ve an idea,” said Waterville, persisting in irrelevant laughter. His laugh sounded foolish in his own ears.
“If you know that, I think you ought to assist me.” Her tone changed now; there was a quick tremor in it; he could feel the confession of distress. The distress verily was deep; it had pressed her hard before she made up her mind to speak to him. He was sorry for her and determined to be very serious.
“If I could help you I would. But my position’s very difficult.”
“It’s not so difficult as mine!” She was going all lengths; she was really appealing to him. “I don’t imagine you under obligations to Mrs. Headway. You seem to me so different,” she added.
He was not insensible to any discrimination that told in his favour; but these words shocked him as if they had been an attempt at bribery. “I’m surprised you don’t like her,” he ventured to bring out.
She turned her eyes through the window. “I don’t think you’re really surprised, though possibly you try to be. I don’t like her at any rate, and I can’t fancy why my son should. She’s very pretty and appears very clever; but I don’t trust her. I don’t know what has taken possession of him; it’s not usual in his family to marry people like that. Surely she’s of no breeding. The person I should propose would be so very different—perhaps you can see what I mean. There’s something in her history we don’t understand. My son understands it no better than I. If you could throw any light on it, that might be a help. If I treat you with such confidence the first time I see you it’s because I don’t know where to turn. I’m exceedingly anxious.”