"I saw no sign of an eruption in him—no lunacy. He chatted quite reasonably about the division on Thursday, and the crops and the weather. Never mentioned Gwen!"
"My dear Mr. Pellew, you really are quite pastoral. Of course, Gwen is exactly what he would not mention."
Mr. Pellew seems to concede that he is an outsider. "You think it was Love at first sight, and that sort of thing," he says. "Well—I hope it will wash. It don't always, you know."
"Indeed it does not." The speaker cannot resist the temptation to flavour philosophy with a suggestion of tender regrets—a hint of a life-drama in her own past. No questions need be answered, and will scarcely be asked. But it is candid and courageous to say as little as may be about it, and to favour a cheerful outlook on Life. She is bound to say that many of the happiest marriages she has known have been marriages of second—third—fourth—fifth—nth Love. She had better have let it stand at that if she wanted her indistinct admirer to screw up his courage then and there to sticking point. For the Hon. Percival had at least seen in her words a road of approach to a reasonably tender elderly avowal. But she must needs spoil it by adding—really quite unconsciously—that many such marriages had been between persons in quite mature years. Somehow this changed the nascent purpose kindled by a suggestion of nth love in Autumn to a sudden consciousness that the conversation was sailing very near the wind—some wind undefined—and made Mr. Pellew run away pusillanimously.
"By-the-by, did you ever see the Macganister More man that died the other day? Married the Earl's half-sister?"
"Never. Of course, I know Clotilda perfectly well."
"Let's see—oh yes!—she's Sister Nora. Oh yes, of course I know Clotilda. She's his heiress, I fancy—comes into all the property—no male heir. She'll go over to Rome, I suppose."
"Why?"
"Always do—with a lot of independent property. Unless some fillah cuts in and snaps her up."
"Do tell me, Mr. Pellew, why it is men can never credit any woman with an identity of her own?"