"Of course we don't, you angel--that's just the ground _I_ take!" her
companion exultantly responded. "He says he doesn't want you mixed up."
"Mixed up with what?"
"That's exactly what _I_ want to know: mixed up with what, and how you
are any more mixed--?" Mrs. Beale paused without ending her question.
She ended after an instant in a different way. "All you can say is that
it's his fancy."
The tone of this, in spite of its expressing a resignation, the fruit of
weariness, that dismissed the subject, conveyed so vividly how much such
a fancy was not Mrs. Beale's own that our young lady was led by the mere
fact of contact to arrive at a dim apprehension of the unuttered and the
unknown. The relation between her step-parents had then a mysterious
residuum; this was the first time she really had reflected that except
as regards herself it was not a relationship. To each other it was only
what they might have happened to make it, and she gathered that this,
in the event, had been something that led Sir Claude to keep away from
her. Didn't he fear she would be compromised? The perception of such a
scruple endeared him the more, and it flashed over her that she might
simplify everything by showing him how little she made of such a danger.
Hadn't she lived with her eyes on it from her third year? It was the
condition most frequently discussed at the Faranges', where the word was
always in the air and where at the age of five, amid rounds of applause,
she could gabble it off.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168