Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/91

 you don't at all thank me for stirring up your son's ambition for objects that lead him so far from home. I seem to feel that I 've made you my enemy."

Mrs. Hudson covered her mouth with her finger tips and looked painfully perplexed between the desire to confess the truth and the fear of being impolite. "My cousin 's no one's enemy," Miss Garland hereupon declared gently, but with the same remorseless consistency with which she had made Rowland relax his grasp of the chair.

"Does she leave that to you?" Rowland ventured to ask with a smile.

"We are inspired with none but Christian sentiments," said Mr. Striker; "Miss Garland perhaps most of all. Miss Garland," and Mr. Striker waved his hand again as if to perform an introduction which had been frivolously omitted, "is the daughter of a minister, the granddaughter of a minister, the sister of a minister."

Rowland signified, so far as he could by a gesture, that he had nothing to say against it, and the girl prosecuted her work with quite as little apparently either of embarrassment or elation at the promulgation of these facts. "Mrs. Hudson, I see," Mr. Striker continued, "is too deeply agitated to converse with you freely. She will allow me to address you a few questions. Would you kindly inform her as exactly as possible just what you propose to do with her son?"

The poor lady fixed her eyes appealingly on Rowland's face and seemed to say that Mr. Striker had spoken her desire, though she herself would have 57