Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/75

Rh Would you wish her to change to Puddick?" This brought her round again, but as the affirmative hadn't quite leaped to her lips he found time to continue. "Unless indeed they can make some arrangement by which he takes her name. Perhaps we can work it that way!"

His suggestion was thrown out as for its positive charm; but Jane stood now, to do her justice, as a rock. "She's doing something that, surely, no girl in the world ever did before,—in preferring, as I so strangely understand you, that her lover shouldn't make her the obvious reparation. But is her reason her dislike of his vulgar name?"

"That has no weight for you, Jane?" Traffle asked in reply.

Jane dismally shook her head. "Who, indeed, as you say, are we? Her reason—if it is her reason—is vulgarer still."

He didn't believe it could be Mora's reason, and though he had made, under the impression of the morning, a brave fight, he had after reflection to allow still for much obscurity in their question. But he had none the less retained his belief in the visibly uncommon young man, and took occasion to make of his wife an inquiry that hadn't hitherto come up in so straight a form, and that sounded of a sudden rather odd. "Are you at all attached to her? Can you give me your word for that?"

She faced him again like a waning wintry moon. "Attached to Mora? Why, she's my sister's child!"