“How do people know I know you?”
“You haven’t ‘blown’ about it? Is that what you mean? You can be a brute when you try. They do know it at any rate. Possibly I may have told them. They’ll come to you to ask about me. I mean from Lady Demesne. She’s in an awful state. She’s so afraid of it—of the way he wants me.”
In himself too, after all, she could still press the spring of careless mirth. “I’m not afraid, if you haven’t yet brought it off.”
“Well, he can’t make up his mind. I appeal to him so, yet he can’t quite place me where he’d have to have me.” Her lucidity and her detachment were both grotesque and touching.
“He must be a poor creature if he won’t take you as you are. I mean for the sweet sake of what you are,” Littlemore added.
This wasn’t a very gallant form, but she made the best of it. “Well—he wants to be very careful, and so he ought!”
“If he asks too many questions he’s not worth marrying,” Littlemore rather cheaply opined.
“I beg your pardon—he’s worth marrying whatever he does; he’s worth marrying for me. And I want to marry him—that’s what I want to do.”
Her old friend had a pause of some blankness. “Is he waiting for me to settle it?”
“He’s waiting for I don’t know what—for some one to come and tell him that I’m the sweetest of the sweet. Then he’ll believe it. Some one who has been out there and knows all about me. Of course you’re the man, you’re created on purpose. Don’t you remember how I told you in Paris he wanted to ask you? He was ashamed and gave it up; he tried to forget me. But now it’s all on again—only meanwhile his mother has been at him. She works night and day, like a weasel in a hole, to persuade him that I’m too much beneath him. He’s very fond of her and very open to influence; I mean from her—not from any one else. Except me of course. Oh I’ve influenced him, I’ve explained everything fifty times over. But some memories, you know, are like those lumpish or pointed things you can’t get into your trunk—they won’t pack anyway; and he keeps coming back to them. He wants every little speck explained. He won’t come to you himself, but his mother will, or she’ll send some of her people. I guess she’ll send the lawyer—the family solicitor they call him. She wanted to send him out to America to make inquiries, only she didn’t know where to send. Of course I couldn’t be expected to give the places—they’ve got to find them out the best way they can. She knows all about you and has made up to your sister; a big proof, as she never makes up to any one. So you see how much I know. She’s waiting for you; she means to hold you with her glittering eye. She has an idea she can—can make you say what’ll meet her views. Then she’ll lay it before Sir Arthur. So you’ll be so good as to have none—not a view.”