“To put him in good humor. You are all vain, you know.
“Upon that he threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter. ‘Go on,’ said he, lolling back and nursing his knee as before. ‘No,’ said I, ‘the fatal gift of beauty is not a crime in itself; it is the use one—’
“‘Do you know,’ said he, interrupting me and leaning forward with deep conviction in his eyes, ‘that you are the most extraordinary girl—I mean mother—that I ever encountered? You ought to write; it is your positive duty. So much brightness—tit for tat, you know—ought not to waste its sweetness, etc. Have you never thought of writing a book?’ ‘Not I,—Mary Rolfe is our genius; I leave that to her.’
“His face flushed slightly, and instantly I changed my whole plan of campaign. I had been making a reconnoissance under cover of the mother and son fiction; but like a wide-awake general, I now, seeing the enemy in confusion, unmasked my batteries and opened fire; that is, I dropped my parasol and sprang towards him with an anxious look: ‘Are you ill?’ I asked.
“His face grew crimson, for he knew what I meant. You see he had once or twice heard me making fun of a certain threadbare trick of the novelists. It would seem that characters in romances never have the least idea that any one is in love with any one. One party casually mentions to a second party the name of a third party. Instantly party No. 2 changes color. ‘Are you ill?’ cries No. 1. ‘It is nothing,’ gasps No. 2; ‘it will pass in a moment.’”
“Yes,” said Charley, “and how singular it is that No. 1 never for a moment suspects the truth, but invariably goes off under the conviction that the poor heroine has eaten something indigestible,—has a pain—nay, even—who minds Jack?—an ache!”
“How shrewd a device!” said Alice, laughing. “The author lets the reader know, while concealing it from the actors in the drama, that the poor girl is desperately gone.”
“Yes,” added Charley; “the author may be said to tip the reader a wink, ‘unbeknownst’—behind No. 1’s back. Now don’t, Alice; do sit down and let’s go on. That’s right. Why, in a novel, even a physician would ask, ‘Are you ill?’—even he could not distinguish between the indications of love and the symptoms of colic.”
“In one word,” said Alice, “those words make a book a novel,—and their absence makes this—a sym—”
Charley here burst into a quotation, speaking fearfully through his nose: “Of this disease the great Napoleon died. Some say that Napoleon was a great man; some say that Washington was a great man; but I say that true greatness consists in moral grandeur. With this brief digression, gentlemen, we will resume our subject.”