“I mean yours.”
“He looked very nice, and you know he’s really clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expression—she said his mind’s like a crystal!”
I pricked up my ears. “A crystal?”
“Suspended in the moral world—swinging and shining and flashing there. She’s monstrously clever, you know.”
I thought again. “Monstrously!”
VIII
George Gravener didn’t follow her, for late in September, after the House had risen, I met him in a railway-carriage. He was coming up from Scotland and I had just quitted some relations who lived near Durham. The current of travel back to London wasn’t yet strong; at any rate on entering the compartment I found he had had it for some time to himself. We fared in company, and though he had a blue-book in his lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me with the white teeth of confused papers, we inevitably, we even at last sociably conversed. I saw things weren’t well with him, but I asked no question till something dropped by himself made, as it had made on another occasion, an absence of curiosity invidious. He mentioned that he was worried about his good old friend Lady Coxon, who, with her niece likely to be detained some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clockborough, much on his mind and on his hands.
“Ah Miss Anvoy’s in America?”
“Her father has got into horrid straits—has lost no end of money.”
I waited, after expressing due concern, but I eventually said: “I hope that raises no objection to your marriage.”