Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/118

 'You know a good deal, Rosy, but you don't know everything,' Muniment remarked in a moment, with a face that gave no sign of seeing a reason in what she said. 'Your mind is too poetical. There's nothing that I should care for that her ladyship would be willing to do for me.'

'She would marry you at a day's notice—she'd do that.'

'I shouldn't care for that. Besides, if I was to ask her she would never come into the place again. And I shouldn't care for that, for you.'

'Never mind me; I'll take the risk!' cried Rosy, gaily.

'But what's to be gained, if I can have her, for you, without any risk?'

'You won't have her for me, or for any one, when she's dead of a broken heart.'

'Dead of a broken tea-cup!' said the young man. 'And, pray, what should we live on, when you had got us set up?—the three of us, without counting the kids.'

He evidently was arguing from pure good-nature, and not in the least from curiosity; but his sister replied as eagerly as if he would be floored by her answer: 'Hasn't she got two hundred a year of her own? Don't I know every penny of her affairs?'

Paul Muniment gave no sign of any mental criticism he may have made on Rosy's conception of the delicate course, or of a superior policy; perhaps, indeed, for it is perfectly possible, her inquiry did not strike him as having a mixture of motives. He only rejoined, with a little pleasant, patient sigh, 'I don't want the dear old girl's money.'

His sister, in spite of her eagerness, waited twenty