Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/295

Rh 'As they are of me?' He took me up promptly, and his eyes were quite unclouded. 'I'm quite sure I shall become so.'

'Then are you taking Lavinia?'

'Not to see them—no.' I saw, myself, the next minute, of course, that I had made a mistake. 'On what footing can I?'

I bethought myself. 'I keep forgetting you're not engaged.'

'Well,' he said after a moment, 'I shall never marry another.'

It somehow, repeated again, gave on my nerves. 'Ah, but what good will that do her, or me either, if you don't marry her?'

He made no answer to this—only turned away to look at something in the room; after which, when he next faced me, he had a heightened colour. 'She ought to have taken me that day,' he said gravely and gently, fixing me also as if he wished to say more.

I remember that his very mildness irritated me; some show of resentment would have been a promise that the case might still be righted. But I dropped it, the silly case, without letting him say more, and, coming back to Mr. and Mrs. Dedrick, asked him how in the world, without either occupation or society, they passed so much of their time. My question appeared for a moment to leave him at a loss, but he presently found light; which, at the same time, I saw on my side, really suited him better than further talk about Lavinia. 'Oh, they live for Maud-Evelyn.'

'And who's Maud-Evelyn?'

'Why, their daughter.'

'Their daughter?' I had supposed them childless.

He partly explained. 'Unfortunately they've lost her.'

'Lost her?' I required more.

He hesitated again. 'I mean that a great many people would take it that way. But they don't—they won't.'

I speculated. 'Do you mean other people would have given her up?'