“By no means.”
“He is still engaged, then?”
“To the best of my belief.”
“And yet you desire that, as you say, he should be made happy by something I can do for him?”
“What I desire is this. That your great influence with him should be exerted for his good, that it should help him and not retard him. Understand me. You probably know that your lovers have rather a restless time of it. I can answer for two of them. You don’t know your own mind very well, I imagine, and you like being admired, rather at the expense of the admirer. Since we are really being frank, I wonder whether I might not say the great word.”
“You need n’t; I know it. I am a horrible coquette.”
“No, not a horrible one, since I am making an appeal to your generosity. I am pretty sure you cannot imagine yourself marrying my friend.”
“There ‘s nothing I cannot imagine! That is my trouble.”
Rowland’s brow contracted impatiently. “I cannot imagine it, then!” he affirmed.
Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, “I am not so bad as you think,” she said.