“Did she indeed?” replied he, in a key of high surprise, while his lazy eyes flashed a look at her, of whose keenness she had not supposed them capable, and which would not have disgraced Camilla’s own. “And yet their methods are not much alike.”
“You mean that Mrs. Tancred does not get up on platforms—does not speak in public?”
In her perfect darkness as to which mode of influencing the human race, his wife’s or his sister’s, most recommended itself to the husband and brother, Miss Ransome stole out her feeler with cautious colourlessness.
“No, my wife does not get up upon platforms.”
There was no emphasis laid on the denial of Camilla’s claim to puffed and self-advertised usefulness, and the answer might seem as colourless as the question, yet after its utterance no vestige of doubt remained in Bonnybell’s mind as to which of his female philanthropists’ methods Edward preferred. Perhaps he did not care much about either. Perhaps he was indifferent to or averse from philanthropy at all. She might as well ask him. Men were so much easier to ask questions of than women.
“You do not do anything of the kind yourself?”
“Of what kind?”
“Oh, good works—that sort of thing.”
She expected his answer with a flattering hanging on his words, but a slight frown creased his forehead as he replied—
“No, I do not do any good works—or bad ones either. I am a mere cumberer of the ground.”