“And, pray, would she lose hers if she were to marry you?”
“Her place at Inglefield, certainly,” said Paul, as patiently as if his sister could never tire him with any insistence or any minuteness.
“Hasn’t she lost that already? Does she ever go there?”
“Surely you appear to think so, from the way you always question her about it,” replied Paul.
“Well, they think her so mad already that they can’t think her any madder,” his sister continued. “They have given her up, and if she were to marry you—”
“If she were to marry me, they wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole,” Paul broke in.
Rosy flinched a moment; then she said, serenely, “Oh, I don’t care for that!”
“You ought to, to be consistent, though, possibly, she shouldn’t, admitting that she wouldn’t. You have more imagination than logic—which of course, for a woman, is quite right. That’s what makes you say that her ladyship is in affliction because I go to a place that she herself goes to without the least compulsion.”
“She goes to keep you off,” said Rosy, with decision.
“To keep me off?”