I remember the first time--it was at the end of about ten days of
this--that Mrs. Pallant remarked to me: "My dear friend, you're quite
AMAZING! You behave for all the world as if you were perfectly ready to
accept certain consequences." She nodded in the direction of our young
companions, but I nevertheless put her at the pains of saying
what consequences she meant. "What consequences? Why the very same
consequences that ensued when you and I first became acquainted."
I hesitated, but then, looking her in the eyes, said: "Do you mean she'd
throw him over?"
"You're not kind, you're not generous," she replied with a quick colour.
"I'm giving you a warning."
"You mean that my boy may fall in love with your girl?"
"Certainly. It looks even as if the harm might be already done."
"Then your warning comes too late," I significantly smiled. "But why do
you call it a harm?"
"Haven't you any sense of the rigour of your office?" she asked. "Is
that what his mother has sent him out to you for: that you shall find
him the first wife you can pick up, that you shall let him put his head
into the noose the day after his arrival?"
"Heaven forbid I should do anything of the kind! I know moreover that
his mother doesn't want him to marry young. She holds it the worst of
mistakes, she feels that at that age a man never really chooses. He
doesn't choose till he has lived a while, till he has looked about and
compared."
"And what do you think then yourself?"
"I should like to say I regard the fact of falling in love, at whatever
age, as in itself an act of selection. But my being as I am at this time
of day would contradict me too much."
"Well then, you're too primitive. You ought to leave this place
tomorrow."
"So as not to see Archie fall--?"
"You ought to fish him out now--from where he HAS fallen--and take him
straight away."