Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/213

Rh of pleasantry, "you can calculate better than I the natural results of drawing him out. But what I can assure you is that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see you so happily 'established,' as they say—so honourably married, so affectionately surrounded and so thoroughly protected."

"And all alongside of you here?" cried Rose.

Tony faltered, but he went on. "It's precisely your being 'alongside' of one that would enable one to see you."

"It would enable one to see you—it would have that particular merit," said Rose. "But my interest in Mr. Beever hasn't at all been of a kind to prompt me to turn the possibility over for myself. You can readily imagine how far I should have been in that case from speaking of it to you. The defect of your charming picture," she presently added, "is that an important figure is absent from it."

"An important figure?"

"Jean Martle."

Tony looked at the tip of his cigarette. "You mean because there was at one time so much