Mr. Jess was placidly contemplating Miss Nina Swetebrede’s candid blue eyes, and knew nothing of what may have tickled his hostess. Tristram, in a few minutes, asked to be shown his room. “I’ve got a heap of letters to write, and some to read. May I ring?”
In the pauses of the party strife, when the champions were out in the lists, Mrs. Germain played lightly upon her heart-strings, plucking chiefly that chord of glamour as she remembered it to have been. Duplessis, who noticed everything about her down to the smallest detail—her clothes, her neatly cut shoes, her manner with servants, with Germain, with the roaring public of the hustings—thought that she carried off the thing very well. Better, no doubt, in his absence; but still, very well. She was shy of him, and that was charming, because it gave her colour and sparkle; she was quickly on her dignity—and that was touching. She seemed to court his good opinion, to dress her little window wistfully. She made him think of a pullet with its first egg; still more touching, by Jove! because there was no egg, and little likelihood of one. And how careful she was! And how she appealed! “Here I am,” she seemed to be saying, with every look, “trusted and responsible, but oh, so safe! Be generous!” He began to judge her again. A girl of her sort, she could no more help using her eyes than avoid breathing through her nose. With every darted look, with every droop of the lids she put herself at his discretion. Well, she needn’t be afraid, poor little soul. He could afford to be generous to one who amused and touched him at once.
Pity is a heady wine. In a man of this sort—your conqueror-by-instinct—it inspires magnanimity; and the worst of that virtue is—you can’t be truly magnanimous until you have reduced the object of your charity to destitution and misery. Before you can lift her out of the mire you must see her in it. He may have been tempted, but her appealing look tempered his rage. Even his grudge against Germain was less sharp than it had been. Germain! Germain, and this love-lorn little creature with her peering eyes! Good Heavens, let her take her joy where she could.
They were rarely alone together, and when they were she was extraordinarily circumspect. But he was master of inuendo, and knew her a good scholar. There was no need for him to say Heigho! to hear it echo from her breast. And the less he said the more she would have him say, he fancied. But he was wrong there.
He said to her once before he left Southover—“I must ask you this. You are happy?”
She stiffened instantly, and looked steadily in front of her—at the south front of Southover, it so happened. “I am very happy.”
“That’s good. I had to ask, you know.”
“Had you?” she said naïvely—and then, “I wonder why?”
“You would say I have no business to care?”
She faced him. “No, I shouldn’t. You are free to do as you like.”