Mrs. Harley’s eyes blazed. “And you can talk this way of the man you are going to marry, a man—” She broke off, her voice choked.
Miss Balfour was cool as a custard. “I can, my dear, and without the least disloyalty. In point of fact, he asked me to tell you the kind of man I think him. I’m trying to oblige him, you see.”
“He asked you—to tell me this about him?” Aline pulled in her pony in order to read with her astonished eyes the amused ones of her companion.
“Yes. He was afraid you were making too much of his saving you. He thinks he won’t do to set on a pedestal.”
“Then I think all the more of him for his modesty.”
“Don’t invest too heavily on his modesty, my dear. He wouldn’t be the man he is if he owned much of that commodity.”
“The man he is?”
“Yes, the man born to win, the man certain of himself no matter what the odds against him. He knows he is a man of destiny; knows quite well that there is something big about him that dwarfs other men. I know it, too. Wherefore I seize my opportunity. It would be a sin to let a man like that get away from one. I could never forgive myself,” she concluded airily.
“Don’t you see any human, lovable things in him?” Aline’s voice was an accusation.
“He is the staunchest friend conceivable. No trouble is too great for him to take for one he likes, and where once he gives his trust he does not take it back. Oh, for all his force, he is intensely human! Take his vanity, my dear. It soars to heaven.”