“Is Crewe engaged to Miss Pomfret?” he asked.
“Are all men simpletons?” said Victoria. “He doesn't know it yet, but he is.”
“I think I'd know it, if I were,” said Austen, with an emphasis that made her laugh.
“Sometimes fish don't know they're in a net until—until the morning after,” said Victoria. “That has a horribly dissipated sound—hasn't it? I know to a moral certainty that Mr. Crewe will eventually lead Miss Pomfret away from the altar. At present,” she could not refrain from adding, “he thinks he's in love with some one else.”
“Who?”
“It doesn't matter,” she replied. “Humphrey's perfectly happy, because he believes most women are in love with him, and he's making up his mind in that magnificent, thorough way of his whether she is worthy to be endowed with his heart and hand, his cows, and all his stocks and bonds. He doesn't know he's going to marry Alice. It almost makes one a Calvinist, doesn't it. He's predestined, but perfectly happy.”
“Who is he in love with?” demanded Austen, ungrammatically.
“I'm going to say good-by to him. I'll meet you in the field, if you don't care to come. It's only manners, after all, although the lemonade's all gone and I haven't had a drop.”
“I'll go along too,” he said.
“Aren't you afraid of Mrs. Pomfret?”