“How long have you known her?”
“About a month. I met her at a friend’s house at Seaview.”
“Have you said anything to her yet?”
“Nothing very definite. I was going to to-day. But I don’t believe it will be any use,” he sighed; “she seems bent on the convent.”
“Do you think she suspects your attachment?”
“Oh, she must by this time. I’ve given up several days’ golf for her. But she’s so confoundedly independent and thinks so badly of men. She fancies they’re all after her because she’s poor.”
“Extraordinary young person!”
“Well, she says that if a man knows a girl’s poor he always believes she’s only too ready to marry him, just to escape from teaching and secure a comfortable home. That’s the sort of girl she is; she swears she won’t be purchased. What am I to do? What do you advise?”
I gave him plenty of sound advice, but could see he wasn’t attending to me. At last he roused himself to ask about my affairs. He had heard the Mabel Harker entanglement was over, and naturally supposed there was some one else. So off I went about Lucy and “The French Horn,” describing her minutely, and how unhappy I was, and how I was going down there at Christmas to make it all up, and that in the meantime—
“Then you would speak to her to-day and get some definite answer out of her?” he asked, biting his nails.