Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to return in real surprise: “Why what do you suppose she has in her mind?”
“To get hold of him, to make him go so far he can’t retreat. To marry him perhaps.”
“To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?”
“She’ll ask me just to make it all right to him—or perhaps you.”
“Yes, as an old friend”—and for a moment I felt it awkwardly possible. But I put to her seriously: “Do you see Jasper caught like that?”
“Well, he’s only a boy—he’s younger at least than she.”
“Precisely; she regards him as a child. She remarked to me herself today, that is, that he’s so much younger.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint took this in. “Does she talk of it with you? That shows she has a plan, that she has thought it over!”
I’ve sufficiently expressed—for the interest of my anecdote—that I found an oddity in one of our young companions, but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for the other. Moreover my reading of Jasper wasn’t in the least that he was catchable—could be made to do a thing if he didn’t want to do it. Of course it wasn’t impossible that he might be inclined, that he might take it—or already have taken it—into his head to go further with his mother’s charge; but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always being with her. He wanted at most to “take up with her” for the voyage. “If you’ve questioned him perhaps you’ve tried to make him feel responsible,” I said to my fellow critic.
“A little, but it’s very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One has to go gently. Besides, it’s too absurd—think of her age. If she can’t take care of herself!” cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.