"Lady Ann, may I ask your advice? You are a woman of the world——"
"Goodness me, no!," I said. "Thirty years ago I may have counted for something there; but now I live under my own little vine and fig-tree; I see no one; I'm out of touch; you'd find me very old-fashioned, I fear."
"You've been very kind to me," he said, "and I want you to add to your kindness. I'm in love with Phyllida, as you know; and she—I think she quite likes me. Lord Brackenbury and every one here have been simply ripping. Please tell me what you think about it."
"Do you mean, will she marry you?," I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Oh, I should think it very likely," I told him; "I wondered whether you meant, would you make her happy?"
"I should certainly hope to do that," he answered.
"We all hope," I said...
My responsibility is confined to giving him a moment's pause for thought. Phyllida will tell you that I set him against her, poisoned his mind, I shouldn't wonder... It's most charitable to recognize that she really did not know what she was saying. I didn't talk about him at all; I talked about Will, about my nephew Culroyd, their friends, their lives... Any deductions were of his drawing; and, goodness me, one need not be branded a snob for seeing that they had been born and bred in different worlds. He seemed to think that love would overcome everything.
"If you're in love," he kept saying, "these things don't matter, do they?"