“That I hope you do not think seriously of asking Mrs. Vansittart to marry you.”
Roden gave his rather unpleasant laugh again. “It happens that I do,” he replied. “And it happens that I know that Mrs. Vansittart never stays in The Hague in summer when all the houses are empty and everybody is away, and the place is given up to tourists, and becomes a mere annex to Scheveningen. This year she has stayed—why, I should like to know.”
And he stroked his moustache as he looked into the fire. He had been indulging in the vain pleasure of putting two and two together. A young man's vanity—or indeed any man's vanity—is not to be trusted to work out that simple addition correctly. Percy Roden was still in a dangerously exalted frame of mind. There is no intoxication so dangerous as that of success, and none that leaves so bitter a taste behind it.
“Of course,” he said, “no girl ever thinks that her brother can succeed in such a case. I suppose you dislike Mrs. Vansittart?”
“No; I like her, and I understand her, perhaps better than you do. I should like nothing better than that she should marry you, but——”
“But what?”
“Well, ask her,” replied Dorothy—a woman's answer.
“And then?”
“And then let us go away from here.”
Roden turned on her angrily. “Why do you keep on repeating that?” he cried. “Why do you want to go away from here?”