“No,” she exclaimed, with quick intensity. “He is not dead! I am sure of it! Please do not say that word again!”
“I will not if you find it objectionable—” he said, gently. “But here again you allow your sentiment to run away with you. You imagine—or let us say you hope for, news that you are not likely to hear. I am—yes, I admit I am rather surprised that you concern yourself so much with that ‘missing’ young man.”
She said nothing.
“Anyway,” he resumed with a patiently resigned air, “you must own that Papa Durham is very attentive, and there is no doubt he is extremely fond of you. I also am very attentive—surely you notice that?—and I am very fond of you too!—so really you have nothing to complain of. Now, have you?”
A little wistful smile quivered on her lips.
“No!” she answered. “I should be sorry to complain.”
“That’s right! You know”—here he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and prepared to fill it afresh—“you know—or you might try to understand that I really want to be nice to you—”
Her eyes sparkled mischievously.
“Do you? Really and truly?”
“Of course I do! Naturally I have my own ways of being nice; and they are not like the ways of ordinary people. I have seen life, and I know that it is rather difficult to live it,—with satisfaction to one’s self. For a solitary man it is hard,—but for a solitary woman it is harder.”