“No, I don’t”—she spoke it rather shortly. And then she added: “He understands—understands everything.”
The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: “And I don’t—is that it?” But these words, in time, changed themselves to others slightly less trivial: “Do you suppose he understands his wife?”
Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a moment’s hesitation put it: “Isn’t she charming?”
“Not in the least!”
“Here he comes. Now you must know him,” she went on. A small group of visitors had gathered at the other end of the gallery and had been there overtaken by Henry St. George, who strolled in from a neighbouring room. He stood near them a moment, not falling into the talk but taking up an old miniature from a table and vaguely regarding it. At the end of a minute he became aware of Miss Fancourt and her companion in the distance; whereupon, laying down his miniature, he approached them with the same procrastinating air, his hands in his pockets and his eyes turned, right and left, to the pictures. The gallery was so long that this transit took some little time, especially as there was a moment when he stopped to admire the fine Gainsborough. “He says Mrs. St. George has been the making of him,” the girl continued in a voice slightly lowered.
“Ah he’s often obscure!” Paul laughed.
“Obscure?” she repeated as if she heard it for the first time. Her eyes rested on her other friend, and it wasn’t lost upon Paul that they appeared to send out great shafts of softness. “He’s going to speak to us!” she fondly breathed. There was a sort of rapture in her voice, and our friend was startled. “Bless my soul, does she care for him like that?—is she in love with him?” he mentally enquired. “Didn’t I tell you he was eager?” she had meanwhile asked of him.
“It’s eagerness dissimulated,” the young man returned as the subject of their observation lingered before his Gainsborough. “He edges toward us shyly. Does he mean that she saved him by burning that book?”
“That book? what book did she burn?” The girl quickly turned her face to him.
“Hasn’t he told you then?”