She continued to smile, and he took her smile; wondering again a little by this time, however; struck more and more by an intensity in it that belied a light tone. "What do you want," he demanded, "to do to me?" And he added, as she didn't say: "You've got something in your mind." It had come to him within the minute that from the beginning of their session there she had been keeping something back, and that an impression of this had more than once, in spite of his general theoretic respect for her present right to personal reserves and mysteries, almost ceased to be vague in him. There had been from the first something in her anxious eyes, in the way she occasionally lost herself, that it would perfectly explain. He was therefore now quite sure.
"You've got something up your sleeve."
She had a silence that made him right. "Well, when I tell you you'll understand. It's only up my sleeve in the sense of being in a letter I got this morning. All day, yes—it HAS been in my mind. I've been asking myself if it were quite the right moment, or in any way fair, to ask you if you could stand just now another woman."
It relieved him a little, yet the beautiful consideration of her manner made it in a degree portentous. "Stand" one—?"
"Well, mind her coming."
He stared—then he laughed. It depends on who she is."
"There—you see! I've at all events been thinking whether you'd take this particular person but as a worry the more. Whether, that is, you'd go so far with her in your notion of having to be kind."
He gave at this the quickest shake to his foot. How far would she go in HER notion of it.
"Well," his daughter returned, "you know how far, in a general way, Charlotte Stant goes."
"Charlotte? Is SHE coming?"