"Damn her then!" Perry cried, but again with a happier frankness than he had hitherto used and as if now at last taking Ralph in on his own account.
"I beg your pardon, cousin—but when you wonder so you must damn somebody!"
"Oh I'm quite willing to be damned—if it's at all better for sweet Nan!" And Ralph addressed this by his laugh to Molly as well, who at present, clearly astounded by her sister's act, if they rightly viewed it, hesitated as to the tone about it which should best conform to that understanding with her lover which she had just renewed. He felt in her as she hovered there a certain nobleness of doubt, and how supremely she was enhanced by all these latter signs of a new strain and stress. It was as if she measured as he lacked matter for doing the extravagance of the girl's step, of which she wished, however, to make neither too much nor too little. She ended after a minute by making nearly nothing, for if she simply said to him, as the rather unexpected issue of her thought, "Give her the right advice—she'd take it from you!" this presented the transaction as a brief and inconsiderable thing; almost indeed in the light of Nan's very own motive and with a proportionate readiness involved.
Ralph wreathed himself again in grace. "Why should she take it from me, whom she has never seen and knows nothing about, when she hasn't taken it from others who have so much more title?" So he spoke, but conscious as soon as he had done so that it wasn't really for him to have drawn out the question—it was much rather for him to have kept it as small as she preferred it. He had begun so, hours back, with the reign of felicity, and how the devil came it therefore that he now repeatedly missed that trick? The inquiry did in fact, to all appearance, somewhat disconcert his friend, who still waited long enough there before him to find her answer, which she brought out, as it struck him, with a quick perversity.
"Well then, frighten her straight away again, if you like that better!" With which she simply left him, passing out at once by the door opposite the one she had quitted and closing it sharply behind her.
Ralph turned to Perry in his flush of wonder. "Frighten her away? Do I frighten——?"
Perry kept his great distance, but spoke after an instant in the sense of accommodation. "You don't frighten me—now. You can't, I wouldn't have it even if you wanted to—which I now guess you don't."
"But why in the name of my dearest interest should I?" It was strange again to Ralph, his facing his young kinsman's so exposed, yet so inscrutable sensibility; yet this aspect of him somehow suggested withal that he mightn't at all prove the person from whom there was most to fear. Why, however, at the same time, did this question of fear, suddenly let loose by Molly in her retreat—for wasn't it a retreat?—seem to flutter about the room, itself a scared bird, and make as if for perching on Ralph's own shoulder? It might verily have been perching as our young man, staring about, plucked a fresh apprehension from Perry. "You don't mean that Molly and I frightened off your mother and Sir Cantopher?"
Perry, though always at his distance, was placed by this almost at his ease. "Molly must answer you for herself—but she doesn't really know much more what to make of you than I do."
Ralph's wide eyes stared his reply still more than his lips could form it. "You don't know what to make of me——?"