"I am very glad you did not go; I have been watching for this opportunity so long! I suppose you don't think what it is to see you across the table, and never have a chance of a word?"
"Monsieur Wargrave," said Mademoiselle, "might avoid that by coming—to dinner, for example, when I am not there."
"It is malice that makes you say so," he replied. She had changed into French and he followed her lead. "You know the purpose for which I come. No, I cannot consent to lose my small opportunity, my holiday from observation, by not speaking of what is nearest my heart."
"Monsieur does not care, then, for spoiling mine?"
"Ah!" he said, "Mademoiselle de Castel-Sombre, you think you can silence me with that. So you can. If it is, indeed, to take anything from you, to spoil your quiet, of course there cannot be any question on the subject, and I will go away."
Thus it would have been easy to finish the conversation. No doubt it would have been rude—and to be rude was very abhorrent to all Mademoiselle's notions—still, on such an important issue, and to secure that he should go away! But Mademoiselle evidently would rather suffer than be so impolite, for she answered not a word.
"I must take advantage when I can," he said, "or otherwise how am I to make myself known to you—how prepare the way? I will talk on any subject you please. I have not come here to worry you, to press myself upon you like an ice or a cup of tea. How I thank you for that simile! I do not want you to take me, when you take me, as if I were a cup of tea."
Mademoiselle once more was silent. If she had combated the assumption of that when, it might have reopened the whole discussion, she said to herself.
"There are certain mistakes about myself I should like to correct," he said. "You seem to have thought I was twenty or twenty-five, and I am thirty-four. It is not of much importance, but I should like you to know it. I wonder Mrs Wargrave, who knows everybody's age, did not inform you of that."
"She does not care about the ages of men," said Mademoiselle with an effort. Like many other people, when there was a desperate occasion for keeping up the conversation, she plunged into sarcasm as the easiest way. "To keep women from going wrong about their age is what she wishes. You know we are sometimes accused of taking off a year or two."