"Aunt Alice isn't playing fair," she said. "She pretends now that it was all my idea—coming over to play at being your uncle's widow, but she really encouraged me to do it so I could give her an impartial judgment of your character. I'm her only niece and her namesake, and she relies on me a good deal. You know she's very, very rich, and she had never any idea of keeping your uncle's money. She meant all the while to give it to you—provided she found you were nice. And she thinks you are very nice."
"Your own opinion of me would be interesting," I suggested.
She had gathered a handful of pebbles and was flinging them fitfully at a bit of driftwood. I wished her lips hadn't that little quiver that preluded laughter and that her eyes were not the haven of all the dreams in the world.
She landed a pebble on the target before replying.
"You are very nice, I think," she said with disconcerting detachment. "At first I was afraid you didn't like nonsense, but you really got through very well, considering the trouble I caused you. But I'm in trouble myself now. Papa will land to-morrow. He's the grandest, dearest man in all this world, but when he finds that I'm going to act in Mr. Searles's play he will be terribly cut up. Of course it will not be for long. Even if it's a big success, I'm to be released in three months. Constance and Sir Cecil think I owe it to myself to appear in the piece; they're good enough to say nobody else can do it so well—which is a question. I'm going to give all the money I earn to the blind soldiers."
(I wished the tears in her eyes didn't make them more lovely still!)
"Being what you are and all you are, it would be brutal for me to add to the number of things you have to tell your father. I'm a very obscure person, and he is a gentleman of title and otherwise distinguished. You are the Honorable Miss——"
"Papa has said numbers of times," she began softly, looking far out across the blue Sound—"he has said, oh, very often, that he'll never stop troubling about me until—until I'm happily married."
"When you came here you wore a wedding-ring," I remarked casually.
"It was only a 'property' ring, to help deceive you. I bought it in Chicago. When Aunt Alice came I threw it away."