It struck me that if I had been in love with her I shouldn't
have needed to lay such a train for the closer approach. Architecture
was his line and he was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. This
reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end of ten
minutes I had an odd sense of knowing--by implication--a good deal about
the young lady.
Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything
possible for her the other visitor sat sipping our iced liquid and
telling how "low" Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl's silence
struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated
her mother's free flow--she was enough of an "improvement" to measure
that--and partly because she was too distressed by the idea of leaving
her infirm, her perhaps dying father. It wasn't indistinguishable that
they were poor and that she would take out a very small purse for her
trousseau. For Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would
have had moreover greatly to change. If he had enriched himself by the
successful practice of his profession I had encountered no edifice he had
reared--his reputation hadn't come to my ears.
Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive
person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis,
but not prepared to pace the deck with her, to struggle with her, to
accompany her to meals.
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