A fleeting glance at Eric’s worried eyes told her that he was less concerned for the world’s history of suffering than for Ivy’s immediate welfare; his use of the plural shewed that they were to be joined in a common rescue; and her mind, seizing the possibility that Eric might be in love, bounded forward to consider whether he should be helped to fall deeper in love with a girl who possessed superficially little more than the daintiness and intoxicating lure of adolescence.
“Tell me about her,” she suggested. “I should like to help if I could.”
Eric described their fragmentary conversation in New York, on the Lithuania, at Lady John Carstairs’ and in Ivy’s attic behind the Adelphi, adding guesswork sketches of the establishment in the Cromwell Road with an unsympathetic father and a helpless mother. Neither the range of his information nor his manner of giving it betrayed any great intimacy.
“Has she any other relations?,” asked Amy.
“Two brothers—demobilized and back at Cambridge—we can rely on them, I suppose, to intervene with the usual horse-whip, if things go too far—; and two sisters who’ve married and shed all responsibility... Perhaps you wonder what I’m doing—”
“It’s very natural. She’s an attractive child.”
“I’m not in love with her or anything of that kind. I don’t think she’s in... danger, but I’d do anything to keep her from being vulgarized.”
Amy busied herself with the tea for a few moments.
“I think she’s a little bit in love with you...” she ventured, when she had given his momentary warmth time to pass away. “Oh, tiny things that only a woman sees. She admires you enormously; and she’s flattered that you take an interest in her. That strengthens your position.”
“But I don’t want to mix myself up in it,” cried Eric impatiently. “One can’t altogether stand aside... Everybody’s business is nobody’s business, and that girl needs some one to take an interest in her. As she doesn’t get on well with her parents, I was wondering if her aunt could be persuaded to take charge of her. All this revolt of the young girl is rooted in boredom; it’s the descent of Nemesis on the Cromwell Road. If Connie Maitland gave her a good time and introduced her and let her see that people would simply cut her if she went off on her own, she’d soon drop this aspect of provincialism. Can’t you play on her vanity? A girl like that would much sooner be a success in society than a rebel against society; she’d sooner marry the second cousin of a baronet than live with the greatest poet or painter of all the age... That’s the object of my call. Forgive me for boring you like this!”