“I don’t want you to help it.”
“I couldn’t, anyway. So you needn’t fear to tell me anything you please.”
“No.... I’ve got to tell you, whether it scares me or not.... I think I’d rather wait until just before you go.”
She curled up on the sofa close to him, one hand clasping her ankles, the other against his shoulder.
“Also, I want to explain to you,” she said, “that I didn’t know Mrs. Grandcourt was your aunt until after I’d fallen in love with you.”
“I don’t follow the continuity——”
“I mean I’m not socially ambitious.”
He was still mystified.
“I didn’t know you were so very important socially,” she explained.
“I’m not. My aunt thinks she is, but really she isn’t any more. Life passed her on the road at eighty with every cylinder hitting. I never travelled that highway. But my poor aunt still trundles along it in an ancient victoria. Even the flivvers cover her old-mine diamonds with plebeian joy-dust——”