“You are too ambiguous. The plain truth is that your cousin prefers to talk to Miss Regan alone, and I didn’t care about appearing a marplot. You know the proverb.”
He was never shrewd. Harassed as he had been by his own affairs, Herbert’s admiration of Olive had never struck him as a serious passion. He conceived his cousin as a philandering person, a man of many flirtations. But now the suggestion that came from Eleanor’s lips seemed to throw a flood of light on everything, even on Herbert’s remark about forbidden fruit. For once Herbert was veritably in love. In his relief at the butterfly’s choice of a definite flower he forgot to resent Mrs. Wyndwood’s reason for giving himself her company.
“Are you sure it isn’t you he admires?” he asked, merely for the pleasure of her denial.
“Oh no! I’m an old, staid, prosaic, mature widow. My romance is over,” she sighed.
She never looked more spiritual than thus in the moonlight. But he could never bring himself to the conventional compliments. He asked, simply:
“And what about Miss Regan?”
“Ah! I should not tell you if I knew, and I don’t know. I don’t profess to understand Miss Regan. I never knew any one so easy to live with and so difficult to understand. But, as she doesn’t understand herself, I don’t feel humiliated. Of course she has always had men at her feet, and she has refused one of the most brilliant partis in the kingdom. I was afraid she hated men, and I’m still uncertain. If she ever does marry I think it will be to spite her relatives, to make them lament she has thrown herself away. Did I tell you that she quarrelled with them all and came to live with me?”
“Yes, you told me. And you were unhappy then?”
She passed her hand across her eyes, but did not speak.
“You are not unhappy now?”