Page:The Finer Grain (London, Methuen & Co., 1910).djvu/90

78 want of him again. "It depends, ma'am, on the sense I understand you to attach to that word," was in any case the answer to which he at his convenience treated Jane.

"I attach to it the only sense," she returned, "that could force me—by my understanding of it—to anything so painful as this inquiry. I mean, are you so much lovers as to make it indispensable you should immediately marry?"

"Indispensable to who, ma'am?" was what Traffle heard their companion now promptly enough produce. To which, as it appeared to take her a little aback, he added: "Indispensable to you, do you mean, Mrs Traffle? Of course, you see, I haven't any measure of that."

"Should you have any such measure"—and with it she had for her husband the effect now of quite "speaking up",—"if I were to give you my assurance that my niece will come into money when the proper means are taken of making her connection with you a little less—or perhaps I should say altogether less—distressing and irregular?"

The auditor of this exchange rocked noiselessly away from his particular point of dissociation, throwing himself at random upon another, before Mr Puddick appeared again to have made up his mind, or at least to have adjusted his intelligence; but the movement had been on Traffle's part but the instinct to stand off more and more,—a vague effort of retreat that didn't prevent the young man's next response