"Oh, the kind of thing men do. They seem to have wonderful ways of
raising money."
"How do you know he's trying it?"
"I don't know for certain; I've only an idea. I rather gather it by the
queer way he comes and goes. The minute a thing is in Peter's hands--"
"Have you such a lot of confidence in him?"
"For this sort of thing--yes. He's terribly able, so they say,
financially. For the matter of that, you can see it by the way he's made
all that money. Bought mines, or something, and sold them again. Bought
'em for nothing, and sold 'em for thousands and thousands."
"Did I ever tell you that he once asked me to marry him?"
Drusilla wheeled round in her chair and stared, open-mouthed, at her
friend's back.
"_No_!"
"Oh, it was years ago. I dare say he's forgotten it."
"I'll bet you ten to one he hasn't."
Olivia took another card and wrote rapidly. "Do you suppose," she said,
trying to speak casually, "that his wanting to help papa out has
anything to do with that?"
"I shouldn't wonder. I shouldn't wonder at all."
"What _could_ it have?"
"Oh, don't ask me! How should I know? Men are so queer. He's getting
some sort of satisfaction out of it, you may depend."
Drusilla answered as she would have liked to be answered were she in a
similar position. That an old admirer should come to her aid like a god
from the machine would have struck her as the most touching thing in the
world. As she wheeled round again to her task it was not without a pang
of wholly impersonal envy at so beautiful a tribute. She had written two
or three cards before she let fall the remark:
"And now poor, dear old mother is manoeuvering to have _me_ marry
him."
The idea was not new to Olivia, so she said, simply, "And are you going
to?"
"Oh, I don't know." Drusilla sighed wearily, then added: "I sha'n't if I
can help it."
"Does that mean that you'll take him if you can't do better?"
"It means that I don't know what I shall do at all. I'm rather sick of
everything--and so I might do anything. I don't want to come back to
live in America, and yet I feel an alien over there, now that I haven't
Gerald to give me a _raison d'être_. They're awfully nice to me--at
Southsea--at Silchester--everywhere--and yet they really don't want me.
I can see that as plainly as I can see your name on this card. But I
can't keep away from them. I've no pride. At least, I've got the pride,
but there's something in me stronger than pride that makes me a kind of
craven. I'm like a dog that doesn't mind being kicked so long as he can
hang about under the dining-room table to sniff up crumbs. With my
temperament it's perfectly humiliating, but I can't help it. I've got
the taste for that English life as a Frenchman gets a taste for
absinthe--knows that it'll be the ruin of him, and yet goes on
drinking."
"I suppose you're not in love with any one over there?"
There was no curiosity in this question. Olivia asked it--she could
scarcely tell why. She noticed that Drusilla stopped writing again and
once more half turned round, though it was not till long afterward that
she attached significance to the fact.
"Who on earth should I be in love with? What put that into your head?"
"Oh, I don't know. Stranger things have happened. You see a great many
men--"
So they went skimming over the surface of confidence, knowing that
beneath what they said there were depths below depths that they dared
not disturb. All the same, it was some relief to both when the maid came
to the door to summon them to luncheon.