“I’m pretty sure Eleanor wouldn’t care,” she said at length. “Hers isn’t a very practical mind. It’s impossible to say about Judge Tiffany. He’s crotchety. The right’s on your side, for a man has a right to change his employment, hasn’t he? And I’m sure you have more than returned your little salary. On the whole, I don’t know but it would be better for you with Eleanor if the Judge did get angry with you. A girl with ideals like hers rather likes to have a man persecuted. And you can’t let it stand in the way of your career.”
“But—”
“Oh, it isn’t as though it were a choice between the girl and the career. It isn’t at all. The best way to win her is to build yourself up to the big, splendid man she’d like you to be. If you stay a little law clerk for five years or so, you won’t have much inducement 191 to offer her! When you consider marriage, you have to remember that a girl like Eleanor can’t live on a trifle. I’d follow my own career. It isn’t, you see, as though there were anyone else in the field. Other men come to the house, of course—men she’s met at the Masters, old friends of the family—but I don’t consider any of them as rivals. I did think for a time that Ned Greene was attracted, but he’s crazy now over Katherine Herbert. So it isn’t a case for immediate action.”
“Do you think—have you ever heard her speak of me?”
Kate’s answer came readily.
“She has spoken to me of you—the way women do, so that you see under what they say. We women are devils”—she smiled—“no, I can’t tell you what she said. I’m in a peculiar position about it. You see, her talk, as it happens, is all twisted up in a confidence she made to me—something else in her life—nothing to do with you—and I can’t break it. But I can do something without breaking any confidence. I can tell you what I think you ought to do.” 192
“Well, I guess that’s what I want—” with the air of one who would have liked a great deal more.
“The man who gets Eleanor Gray—and especially if Bertram Chester is the man—cannot take her by assault. If you reach out to grasp her—you who are so strong—it will only break something in that delicate nature of hers. Don’t woo. Serve. Don’t even see her too often. Don’t renew that scene on the balcony—never make that mistake again. When you are with her, show by your attitude how you feel, and show her—well, that you’re learning the things you’ve asked me to teach you—the things I’m going to teach you.”
“It’s sure a pink tea program,” said Bertram. Kate laughed.
“Bert Chester, when you make your dying speech from the scaffold you’re going to say something original and funny. You can’t help it. Now can you?”