Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/194

180 He stood there in his tall awkwardness; he spoke as if he had not heard her. "It's too strange to have to take it from you."

"Everything's strange—and the truest things are the strangest. Besides, it isn't so extraordinary as that comes to. It isn't as if you had an objection to her; it isn't as if she weren't beautiful and good—really cultivated and altogether charming. It isn't as if, since I first saw her here, she hadn't developed in the most admirable way, and also hadn't, by her father's death, come into three thousand a year and into an opportunity for looking, with the red gold of her hair, in the deepest, daintiest, freshest mourning, lovelier far, my dear boy, than, with all respect, any girl who can ever have strayed before, or ever will again, into any Wilverley bank. It isn't as if, granting you do care for me, there were the smallest chance, should you try to make too much of it, of my ever doing anything but listen to you with a pained 'Oh, dear!' pat you affectionately on the back and push you promptly out of the room." Paul Beever, when she thus encountered him, quitted his place, moving slowly outside the wide cluster of chairs, while Rose, within it, turned as he turned, pressing