She expressed neither surprise nor elation; she simply stood there smiling, her head a little inclined to the side and her beautiful benevolence well to the front. Her charming eyes rested on Doctor Lemon’s; and, though they showed a shade of anxiety for a matter of such importance, his own discovered in them none of the coldness of calculation. “Are you talking about dear Barb?” she asked in a moment and as if her thoughts had been far away.
Of course they were talking about dear Barb, and Jackson repeated to her what he had said to her noble spouse. He had thought it all over and his mind was quite made up. Moreover, he had spoken to the young woman.
“Did she tell you that, my dear?” his lordship asked while he lighted another cigar.
She gave no heed to this inquiry, which had been vague and accidental on the speaker’s part; she simply remarked to their visitor that the thing was very serious and that they had better sit down a moment. In an instant he was near her on the sofa on which she had placed herself and whence she still smiled up at her husband with her air of luxurious patience.
“Barb has told me nothing,” she dropped, however, after a little.
“That proves how much she cares for me!” Jackson declared with instant lucidity.
Lady Canterville looked as if she thought this really too ingenious, almost as professional as if their talk were a consultation; but her husband went, all gaily, straighter to the point. “Ah well, if she cares for you I don’t object.”
This was a little ambiguous; but before the young man had time to look into it his hostess put a bland question. “Should you expect her to live in America?”
“Oh yes. That’s my home, you know.”
“Shouldn’t you be living sometimes in England?”