Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/291

Rh Lavinia. He had written to her, they were still such friends; and thus it was that she knew his aunt and his cousin to have come back without him. He had stayed on—stayed much longer and travelled much further: he had been to the Italian lakes and to Venice; he was now in Paris. At this I vaguely wondered, knowing that he was always short of funds and that he must, by his uncle's beneficence, have started on the journey on a basis of expenses paid. 'Then whom has he picked up?' I asked; but feeling sorry, as soon as I had spoken, to have made Lavinia blush. It was almost as if he had picked up some improper lady, though in this case he wouldn't have told her, and it wouldn't have saved him money.

'Oh, he makes acquaintance so quickly, knows people in two minutes,' the girl said. 'And every one always wants to be nice to him.'

This was perfectly true, and I saw what she saw in it. 'Ah, my dear, he will have an immense circle ready for you!'

'Well,' she replied, 'if they do run after us I'm not likely to suppose it will ever be for me. It will be for him, and they may do to me what they like. My pleasure will be—but you'll see.' I already saw—saw at least what she supposed she herself saw: her drawing-room crowded with female fashion and her attitude angelic. 'Do you know what he said to me again before he went?' she continued.

I wondered; he had then spoken to her. 'That he will never, never marry'

'Any one but me!' She ingenuously took me up. 'Then you knew?'

It might be. 'I guessed.'

'And don't you believe it?'

Again I hesitated. 'Yes.' Yet all this didn't tell me why she had changed colour. 'Is it a secret—whom he's with?'

'Oh no, they seem so nice. I was only struck with the way you know him—your seeing immediately that it must