Part 22 (2/2)

”What she has told my son? I shouldn't understand it. My son doesn't understand it.” She had a full pause, a profusion of patience; then she resumed disappointedly: ”It's very strange. I rather hoped you might explain it.”

He turned the case over. ”I'm afraid I can't explain Mrs. Headway,” he concluded.

”I see you admit she's very peculiar.”

Even to this, however, he hesitated to commit himself. ”It's too great a responsibility to answer you.” He allowed he was very disobliging; he knew exactly what Lady Demesne wished him to say. He was unprepared to blight the reputation of Mrs. Headway to accommodate her; and yet, with his cultivated imagination, he could enter perfectly into the feelings of this tender formal serious woman who-it was easy to see-had looked for her own happiness in the observance of duty and in extreme constancy to two or three objects of devotion chosen once for all. She must indeed have had a conception of life in the light of which Nancy Beck would show both for displeasing and for dangerous. But he presently became aware she had taken his last words as a concession in which she might find help.

”You know why I ask you these things then?”

”I think I've an idea,” said Waterville, persisting in irrelevant laughter. His laugh sounded foolish in his own ears.

”If you know that, I think you ought to a.s.sist me.” Her tone changed now; there was a quick tremor in it; he could feel the confession of distress. The distress verily was deep; it had pressed her hard before she made up her mind to speak to him. He was sorry for her and determined to be very serious.

”If I could help you I would. But my position's very difficult.”

”It's not so difficult as mine!” She was going all lengths; she was really appealing to him. ”I don't imagine you under obligations to Mrs.

Headway. You seem to me so different,” she added.

He was not insensible to any discrimination that told in his favour; but these words shocked him as if they had been an attempt at bribery. ”I'm surprised you don't like her,” he ventured to bring out.

She turned her eyes through the window. ”I don't think you're really surprised, though possibly you try to be. I don't like her at any rate, and I can't fancy why my son should. She's very pretty and appears very clever; but I don't trust her. I don't know what has taken possession of him; it's not usual in his family to marry people like that. Surely she's of _no_ breeding. The person I should propose would be so very different-perhaps you can see what I mean. There's something in her history we don't understand. My son understands it no better than I. If you could throw any light on it, that might be a help. If I treat you with such confidence the first time I see you it's because I don't know where to turn. I'm exceedingly anxious.”

It was plain enough she was anxious; her manner had become more vehement; her eyes seemed to s.h.i.+ne in the thickening dusk. ”Are you very sure there's danger?” Waterville asked. ”Has he proposed to her and has she jumped at him?”

”If I wait till they settle it all it will be too late. I've reason to believe that my son's not engaged, but I fear he's terribly entangled.

At the same time he's very uneasy, and that may save him yet. He has a great sense of honour. He's not satisfied about her past life; he doesn't know what to think of what we've been told. Even what she admits is so strange. She has been married four or five times. She has been divorced again and again. It seems so extraordinary. She tells him that in America it's different, and I dare say you haven't our ideas; but really there's a limit to everything. There must have been great irregularities-I'm afraid great scandals. It's dreadful to have to accept such things. He hasn't told me all this, but it's not necessary he should tell me. I know him well enough to guess.”

”Does he know you're speaking to me?” Waterville asked.

”Not in the least. But I must tell you I shall repeat to him anything you may say against her.”

”I had better say nothing then. It's very delicate. Mrs. Headway's quite undefended. One may like her or not, of course. I've seen nothing of her that isn't perfectly correct,” our young man wound up.

”And you've heard nothing?”

He remembered Littlemore's view that there were cases in which a man was bound in honour to tell an untruth, and he wondered if this were such a one. Lady Demesne imposed herself, she made him believe in the reality of her grievance, and he saw the gulf that divided her from a pus.h.i.+ng little woman who had lived with Western editors. She was right to wish not to be connected with Mrs. Headway. After all, there had been nothing in his relations with that lady to hold him down to lying for her. He hadn't sought her acquaintance, she had sought his; she had sent for him to come and see her. And yet he couldn't give her away-that stuck in his throat. ”I'm afraid I really can't say anything. And it wouldn't matter. Your son won't give her up because I happen not to like her.”

”If he were to believe she had done wrong he'd give her up.”

”Well, I've no right to say so,” said Waterville.

Lady Demesne turned away; he indeed disappointed her and he feared she was going to break out: ”Why then do you suppose I asked you here?” She quitted her place near the window and prepared apparently to leave the room. But she stopped short. ”You know something against her, but you won't say it.”

He hugged his folio and looked awkward. ”You attribute things to me. I shall never say anything.”

”Of course you're perfectly free. There's some one else who knows, I think-another American-a gentleman who was in Paris when my son was there. I've forgotten his name.”

”A friend of Mrs. Headway's? I suppose you mean George Littlemore.”

<script>