Page:The Aspern Papers.djvu/185

 'Dear Mrs. Pallant, what do you mean?' I murmured, staring.

She bent her face into her hands, covering it over with them, and remained so for a minute; then she went on, in a different manner, as if she had not heard my question: 'I hoped you were too disgusted with us, after the way we left you planted.'

'It was disconcerting, assuredly, and it might have served if Linda hadn't written. That patched it up,' I said, laughing. But my laughter was hollow, for I had been exceedingly impressed with her little explosion of a moment before. 'Do you really mean she is bad?' I added.

Mrs. Pallant made no immediate answer to this; she only said that it did not matter after all whether the crisis should come a few weeks sooner or a few weeks later, since it was destined to come at the first opening. Linda had marked my young man and when Linda had marked a thing!

'Bless my soul—how very grim! Do you mean she's in love with him?' I demanded, incredulous.

'It's enough if she makes him think she is—though even that isn't essential.'

'If she makes him think so? Dearest lady, what do you mean? I have observed her, I have watched her, and after all what has she done? She has been nice to him, but it would have been much more marked if she hadn't. She has really shown him nothing but the common friendliness of a bright, good-natured girl. Her note was nothing; he showed it to me.'

'I don't think you have heard every word that she has said to him,' Mrs. Pallant rejoined, with a persistence that struck me as unnatural.