"Let her? how could I prevent it?"
"But she asked your permission."
"Ah that," she cried, "is all a part of all the comedy!"
It fairly hushed me to silence, and for a moment more she said nothing. "Then she doesn't know you hate her?" I resumed.
"I don't know what she knows. She has depths and depths, and all of them bad. Besides, I don't hate her in the least; I just pity her for what I've made of her. But I pity still more the man who may find himself married to her."
"There's not much danger of there being any such person," I wailed, "at the rate you go on."
"I beg your pardon—there's a perfect possibility," said my companion. "She'll marry—she'll marry 'well.' She'll marry a title as well as a fortune.
"It's a pity my nephew hasn't a title," I attempted the grimace of suggesting.
She seemed to wonder. "I see you think I want that, and that I'm acting a part. God forgive you! Your suspicion's perfectly natural. How can any one TELL," asked Louisa Pallant—"with people like us?"
Her utterance of these words brought tears to my eyes. I laid my hand on her arm, holding her a while, and we looked at each other through the dusk. "You couldn't do more if he were my son."