I tried to avoid her eyes. “Not any way at all,” I stammered. “That is, just the way I feel, with polite indifference.”
Mrs. Brane gave a little trill of sad laughter. “Oh, how I am enjoying this nonsense, Janice! I have n't talked such delicious stuff for years. No, dear, you don't treat him with polite indifference at all. You treat him with the most dreadful and crushing and stately hauteur imaginable. Now, you were much more affable with the Baron.”
I gave a little involuntary shiver.
“How ridiculous that creature was, was n't he?” laughed Mrs. Brane. “I could hardly keep my face straight as I looked at him. He was like a make-up of some kind. He did n't seem real, do you know what I mean? I wish he had stayed to dinner. He would have amused me.”
“He did n't amuse me,” I said positively; “I thought he was detestable.”
“Poor Baron Borff! And he was so enamoured. You have a very hard heart, Janice. Never mind, when I get rich, I'll set you up like a queen. You must not be a housekeeper always even if you do refuse to be a baroness. You did n't know I had hopes of wealth, did you?” She looked rather sly as she put this question.
“I had fancied it, Mrs. Brane,” I said.
She looked about the room nervously and lowered her voice.
“It is so queer, Janice,” she said; then she moved over to the sofa where I sat and spoke very low indeed: “It is so queer to have a fortune and—not to know where it is.”
I, too, looked anxiously about me, even behind me where there was no possible space for a listener.