Page:The Aspern Papers.djvu/193

 We were silent a moment, after which I resumed: 'Then she doesn't know you hate her?'

'I don't know what she knows. She has depths and depths, and all of them bad. Besides, I don't hate her in the least; I pity her simply, for what I have made of her. But I pity still more the man who may find himself married to her.'

'There's not much danger of there being any such person, at the rate you go on.'

'Oh, perfectly; she'll marry some one. She'll marry a title as well as a fortune.'

'It's a pity my nephew hasn't a title,' I murmured, smiling.

She hesitated a moment. 'I see you think I want that and that I am acting a part. God forgive you! Your suspicion is perfectly natural: how can any one tell, with people like us?'

The way she uttered these last words brought tears to my eyes. I laid my hand on her arm, holding her awhile, and we looked at each other through the dusk. 'You couldn't do more if he were my son,' I said at last.

'Oh, if he had been your son he would have kept out of it! I like him for himself; he's simple and honest—he needs affection.'

'He would have an admirable, a devoted, mother-in-law,' I went on.

Mrs. Pallant gave a little impatient sigh and replied that she was not joking. We sat there some time longer, while I thought over what she had said to me and she apparently did the same. I confess that even close at her side, with the echo of her passionate, broken voice still in the air, some queer ideas came into my head. Was the comedy on her