THE SACRED FOUNT
"Dear no—poor Briss! He wouldn't like that. I saw the manœuvre, but Guy didn't. And you must have noticed how he stuck to her all last evening."
"How Gilbert Long stuck to Lady John? Oh yes, I noticed. They were like Lord Lutley and Mrs. Froome. But is that what one can call being tender of her?"
My companion weighed it. "He must speak to her sometimes. I'm glad you admit, at any rate," she continued, "that it does take what you so prettily call some woman's secretly giving him of her best to account for him."
"Oh, that I admit with all my heart—or at least with all my head. Only, Lady John has none of the signs———"
"Of being the beneficent woman? What then are they—the signs—to be so plain?" I was not yet quite ready to say, however; on which she added: "It proves nothing, you know, that you don't like her."
"No. It would prove more if she didn't like me, which—fatuous fool as you may find me—I verily believe she does. If she hated me it would be, you see, for my ruthless analysis of her secret. She has no secret. She would like awfully to have—and she would like almost as much to be believed to have. Last evening, after dinner, she could feel perhaps for a while that she was believed. But it
34
