"Cold?" she interrupted with a slight laugh. "Me—cold?... Yes, I suppose I might seem so. I daresay I appear to be a perfect human icicle...." She laughed again, and then turned directly toward James. "See here, James, it's more than likely that we shall never see each other again after to-day, isn't it?"
"I suppose not, if you intend to go—"
"The first moment I can. Consequently it doesn't matter particularly what I say to you now or what you think of me afterward. I should just like to give you an idea of what these years have been to me. It may amuse you to know that the pursuit of your brother has been the one guiding passion of my life since I was eighteen. I was in love with him before he left England and I've wanted him from that time on—wanted him with all the strength of my soul and body! Wanted him every living moment of the day and night!... Can you conceive of what that means for a woman? A woman, who can't speak, can't act, can't make the slightest advance, can't give the least glimmering of her feeling?—not only because the world doesn't approve but because her game's all up if the man gets a suspicion that she's after him.... I suppose I knew it was hopeless from the start, though I couldn't bring myself to admit it. At any rate, as soon as the chance came I made up my mind to come over here and just sit around in his way and wait—the only thing a woman can do under the circumstances...."
"I never—I didn't realize quite all that," stammered James. "Though I knew—I guessed about the other.... You mean you deliberately came to America—"
"With that sole purpose."
"And you—you...." He fairly gasped.
"I wormed my way into a place in your family with that one end in view, if that's what you mean. And I've remained here with that one end in view ever since."
"And all your work—the League—"
"I had to do something, in the meanwhile—No, that's not true either; that was another means to the same end. Intended to be." She smiled with the same quiet intensity of bitterness that had struck James before.
"But what about you and Aunt Selina? I always thought—"