"No, no one has spoken. Moreover I wouldn't have let them."
"Then there you _are_!" Brissenden exclaimed. "If you've kept them off,
it must be because you differ with them."
"I shan't be sure of that," I returned, "till I know what they think!
However, I repeat," I added, "that I shouldn't even then care. I don't
mind admitting that she much interests me."
"There you are, there you are!" he said again.
"That's all that's the matter with her so far as _I_'m concerned. You
see, at any rate, how little it need make her afraid of me. She's lovely
and she's gentle and she's happy."
My friend kept his eyes on me. "What is there to interest you so in
that? Isn't it a description that applies here to a dozen other women?
You can't say, you know, that you're interested in _them_, for you just
spoke of them as so many fools."
There was a certain surprise for me in so much acuteness, which,
however, doubtless admonished me as to the need of presence of mind. "I
wasn't thinking of the ladies--I was thinking of the men."
"That's amiable to _me_," he said with his gentle gloom.
"Oh, my dear Brissenden, I except 'you.'"
"And why should you?"
I felt a trifle pushed. "I'll tell you some other time. And among the
ladies I except Mrs. Brissenden, with whom, as you may have noticed,
I've been having much talk."
"And will you tell me some other time about that too?" On which, as I
but amicably shook my head for no, he had his first dimness of
pleasantry. "I'll get it then from my wife."
"Never. She won't tell you."
"She has passed you her word? That won't alter the fact that she tells
me everything."
He really said it in a way that made me take refuge for an instant in
looking at my watch. "Are you going back to tea? If you are, I'll, in
spite of my desire to roam, walk twenty steps with you." I had already
again put my hand into his arm, and we strolled for a little till I
threw off that I was sure Mrs. Server was waiting for him. To this he
replied that if I wished to get rid of him he was as willing to take
that as anything else for granted--an observation that I, on my side,
answered with an inquiry, though an inquiry that had nothing to do with
it. "Do you also tell everything to Mrs. Brissenden?"
It brought him up shorter than I had expected. "Do you ask me that in
order that I shan't speak to her of this?"