Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/191

Rh mother you had already said when she said just the same."

Rose stared an instant; then she smiled again. "It's complicated, but I follow you! She has been waking you up."

"She knows," said her companion, "that you advise me in the same sense as herself."

"She believes it at last—her leaving us together was a sign of that. I have at heart perfectly to justify her confidence, for hitherto she has been so blind to her own interest as to suppose that, in these three weeks, you had been so tiresome as to fall in love with me."

"I particularly told her I haven't at all."

Paul's tone had at moments of highest gravity the gift of moving almost any interlocutor to mirth. "I hope you'll be more convincing than that if you ever particularly tell any one you have at all!" the girl exclaimed. She gave a slight push to the hammock, turning away, and he swung there gently a minute.

"You mustn't ask too much of me, you know," he finally said, watching her as she went to the table and poured out a cup of tea.