‘Surely I’ve told you I thought she did.’
A quick blush sprang to his brow. ‘You told me she would have no wish apart from her father’s, and as I’ve gathered that he would favour me—!’ He paused a little and then suggested ‘Don’t you see?’ through his blush.
‘Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it would probably take her very far.’
‘That seems to me a very proper feeling,’ said Lord Warburton.
‘Certainly; it’s a very proper feeling.’ Isabel remained silent for some moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she said: ‘But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man would wish to be indebted for a wife.’
‘I don’t know; if the wife’s a good one and he thinks she does well!’
‘Yes, of course you must think that.’
‘I do; I can’t help it. You call that very British, of course.’
‘No, I don’t. I think Pansy would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don’t know who should know it better than you. But you’re not in love.’
‘Ah, yes I am, Mrs Osmond!’
Isabel shook her head. ‘You like to think you are while you sit here with me. But that’s not how you strike me.’
‘I’m not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss Osmond?’
‘No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.’
‘I don’t agree with you. I’m delighted to have good reasons.’
‘Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn’t care a straw for them.’
‘Ah, really in love—really in love!’ Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. ‘You must remember that I’m forty-two years old. I won’t pretend I’m as I once was.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said Isabel, ‘it’s all right.’
He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his friend. ‘Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?’
She met his eyes, and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account—that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.