Генри Джеймс
A London Life, and Other Tales
It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue should not feel that they were importunate: what was striking was that Mrs. Nettlepoint did not appear to suspect it. However, she would in any case have thought it inhuman to show that—though I could see that under the surface she was amused at everything the lady from the South End took for granted. I know not whether the attitude of the younger visitor added or not to the merit of her good-nature. Mr. Porterfield's intended took no part in her mother's appeal, scarcely spoke, sat looking at the Back Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She declined the lemonade and the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint's request, I offered her, while her mother partook freely of everything and I reflected (for I as freely consumed the reviving liquid) that Mr. Jasper had better hurry back if he wished to profit by the refreshment prepared for him.
Was the effect of the young woman's reserve ungracious, or was it only natural that in her particular situation she should not have a flow of compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at her often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was interesting. The candle-light enabled me to see that if she was not in the very first flower of her youth she was still a handsome girl. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale and she held up her head as if, with its thick braids, it were an appurtenance she was not ashamed of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not common (not flagrantly so) and perhaps not excellent. At all events she would not be, in appearance at least, a dreary appendage, and (in the case of a person 'hooking on') that was always something gained. Is it because something of a romantic or pathetic interest usually attaches to a good creature who has been the victim of a 'long engagement' that this young lady made an impression on me from the first—favoured as I had been so quickly with this glimpse of her history? Certainly she made no positive appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit was dead—the spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to carry out the letter.
What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which gathered vividness as I listened to it—a mental association which the name of Mr. Porterfield had evoked. Surely I had a personal impression, over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at Liverpool, or who would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint's protégée. I had met him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow, in Europe. Was he not studying something—very hard—somewhere, probably in Paris, ten years before, and did he not make extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and architectural? Didn't he go to a table d'hôte, at two francs twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn't he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say, 'I have trustworthy information that that is the way they do it in the Highlands'? Was he not exemplary and very poor, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan was what he slept under at night? Was he not working very hard still, and wouldn't he be in the natural course, not yet satisfied that he knew enough to launch out? He would be a man of long preparations—Miss Mavis's white face seemed to speak to one of that. It appeared to me that if I had been in love with her I should not have needed to lay such a train to marry her. Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the École des Beaux Arts. This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end of ten minutes I had a curious sense of knowing—by implication—a good deal about the young lady.
Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything for her that she could her mother sat a little, sipping her syrup 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 loquacity (she was enough of an 'improvement' to measure that) and partly because she was too full of pain at the idea of leaving her infirm, her perhaps dying father. I divined that they were poor and that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau. Moreover for Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had to change. If he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his profession I had not encountered the buildings he had reared—his reputation had not 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 she was not prepared to walk with her, to struggle with her, to accompany her to the table. To this the girl replied that she would trouble her little, she was sure: she had a belief that she should prove a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her mother scoffed at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I said that if I might be trusted, as a tame old bachelor fairly sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it. Both the ladies thanked me for this (taking my description only too literally), and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She inquired of Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else—if she were to be accompanied by some of her family; and when our hostess mentioned her son—there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn't it absurd?) he had not decided yet, she rejoined with extraordinary candour—'Oh dear, I do hope he'll go: that would be so pleasant for Grace.'
Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield's tartan, especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment. His mother instantly challenged him: it was ten o'clock; had he by chance made up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her, being in the first place surprised at the strange ladies and then struck with the fact that one of them was not strange. The young man, after a slight hesitation, greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and an 'Oh, good evening, how do you do?' He did not utter her name, and I could see that he had forgotten it; but she immediately pronounced his, availing herself of an American girl's discretion to introduce him to her mother.
'Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!' Mrs. Mavis exclaimed. Then smiling at Mrs. Nettlepoint she added, 'It would have saved me a worry, an acquaintance already begun.'
'Ah, my son's acquaintances–!' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured.
'Yes, and my daughter's too!' cried Mrs. Mavis, jovially. 'Mrs. Allen didn't tell us you were going,' she continued, to the young man.
'She would have been clever if she had been able to!' Mrs. Nettlepoint ejaculated.
'Dear mother, I have my telegram,' Jasper remarked, looking at Grace Mavis.
'I know you very little,' the girl said, returning his observation.
'I've danced with you at some ball—for some sufferers by something or other.'
'I think it was an inundation,' she replied, smiling. 'But it was a long time ago—and I haven't seen you since.'
'I have been in far countries—to my loss. I should have said it was for a big fire.'
'It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn't remember your name,' said Grace Mavis.
'That is very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink dress.'
'Oh, I remember that dress—you looked lovely in it!' Mrs. Mavis broke out. 'You must get another just like it—on the other side.'
'Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,' said Jasper Nettlepoint. Then he added, to the girl—'Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.'
'It came back to me—seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.'
'Well, I confess it isn't, much. Oh, there are some drinks!' Jasper went on, approaching the tray and its glasses.
'Indeed there are and quite delicious,' Mrs. Mavis declared.
'Won't you have another then?—a pink one, like your daughter's gown.'
'With pleasure, sir. Oh, do see them over,' Mrs. Mavis continued, accepting from the young man's hand a third tumbler.
'My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,' said Jasper Nettlepoint.
'But my daughter—she has a claim as an old friend.'
'Jasper, what does your telegram say?' his mother interposed.
He gave no heed to her question: he stood there with his glass in his hand, looking from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.
'Ah, leave her to me, madam; I'm quite competent,' I said to Mrs. Mavis.
Then the young man looked at me. The next minute he asked of the young lady—'Do you mean you are going to Europe?'
'Yes, to-morrow; in the same ship as your mother.'
'That's what we've come here for, to see all about it,' said Mrs. Mavis.
'My son, take pity on me and tell me what light your telegram throws,' Mrs. Nettlepoint went on.
'I will, dearest, when I've quenched my thirst.' And Jasper slowly drained his glass.
'Well, you're worse than Gracie,' Mrs. Mavis commented. 'She was first one thing and then the other—but only about up to three o'clock yesterday.'
'Excuse me—won't you take something?' Jasper inquired of Gracie; who however declined, as if to make up for her mother's copious consommation. I made privately the reflection that the two ladies ought to take leave, the question of Mrs. Nettlepoint's goodwill being so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the ship so near at hand; and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay, with their hostess visibly in a fidget, was a sign of a want of breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her mother, for she easily might have taken the initiative of departure, in spite of Mrs. Mavis's imbibing her glass of syrup in little interspaced sips, as if to make it last as long as possible. I watched the girl with an increasing curiosity; I could not help asking myself a question or two about her and even perceiving already (in a dim and general way) that there were some complications in her position. Was it not a complication that she should have wished to remain long enough to assuage a certain suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to sail? Had not something particular passed between them on the occasion or at the period to which they had covertly alluded, and did she really not know that her mother was bringing her to his mother's, though she apparently had thought it well not to mention the circumstance? Such things were complications on the part of a young lady betrothed to that curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add that she gave me no further warrant for suspecting them than by the simple fact of her encouraging her mother, by her immobility, to linger. Somehow I had a sense that she knew better. I got up myself to go, but Mrs. Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement would not be taken as a hint, and I perceived she wished me not to leave my fellow-visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room—one ought to be out in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother, whom he had not yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for a dozen people. She assured him we would go and sit there if it would please him.
'It will be nice and cool to-morrow, when we steam into the great ocean,' said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before. Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said, smiling, to Miss Mavis—'Won't you come with me and see if it's pleasant?'
'Oh, well, we had better not stay all night!' her mother exclaimed, but without moving. The girl moved, after a moment's hesitation; she rose and accompanied Jasper into the other room. I observed that her slim tallness showed to advantage as she walked and that she looked well as she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising (I scarcely knew why, for the act was simple enough) in her doing so, and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go, so that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to go so that I might not. This doubtless made the young lady's absence appear to us longer than it really was—it was probably very brief. Her mother moreover, I think, had a vague consciousness of embarrassment. Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to get a glass of syrup for his companion, and he took occasion to remark that it was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the breeze was from that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler, that from my hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs. Nettlepoint said—'Well, if it's so pleasant there we had better go ourselves.' So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two young people coming in from the balcony. I wondered in the light of subsequent events exactly how long they had been sitting there together. (There were three or four cane chairs which had been placed there for the summer.) If it had been but five minutes, that only made subsequent events more curious. 'We must go, mother,' Miss Mavis immediately said; and a moment later, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with them to the door and as soon as they had gone out Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed—'Ah, but she'll be a bore—she'll be a bore!'
'Not through talking too much—surely.'
'An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular pose; it's coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea—that will act on one's nerves!'
'I don't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very handsome.'
'So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be shut up. I like her being placed under my "care."'
'She will be under Jasper's,' I remarked.
'Ah, he won't go—I want it too much.'
'I have an idea he will go.'
'Why didn't he tell me so then—when he came in?'
'He was diverted by Miss Mavis—a beautiful unexpected girl sitting there.'
'Diverted from his mother—trembling for his decision?'
'She's an old friend; it was a meeting after a long separation.'
'Yes, such a lot of them as he knows!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
'Such a lot of them?'
'He has so many female friends—in the most varied circles.'
'Well, we can close round her then—for I on my side knew, or used to know, her young man.'
'Her young man?'
'The fiancé, the intended, the one she is going out to. He can't by the way be very young now.'
'How odd it sounds!' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
I was going to reply that it was not odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield, but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my companion briefly who he was—that I had met him in the old days in Paris, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint, when I lived with the jeunesse des écoles, and her comment on this was simply—'Well, he had better have come out for her!'
'Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if she might change her mind at the last moment.'
'About her marriage?'
'About sailing. But she won't change now.'
Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. 'Well, are you going?'
'Yes, I shall go,' he said, smiling. 'I have got my telegram.'
'Oh, your telegram!' I ventured to exclaim. 'That charming girl is your telegram.'
He gave me a look, but in the dusk I could not make out very well what it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. 'My news isn't particularly satisfactory. I am going for you.'
'Oh, you humbug!' she rejoined. But of course she was delighted.
II
People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison such men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so it seemed were Miss Mavis's, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, looking back at the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said—'I think you mentioned last night a name I know—that of Mr. Porterfield.'
'Oh no, I never uttered it,' she replied, smiling at me through her closely-drawn veil.
'Then it was your mother.'
'Very likely it was my mother.' And she continued to smile, as if I ought to have known the difference.
'I venture to allude to him because I have an idea I used to know him,' I went on.
'Oh, I see.' Beyond this remark she manifested no interest in my having known him.
'That is if it's the same one.' It seemed to me it would be silly to say nothing more; so I added 'My Mr. Porterfield was called David.'
'Well, so is ours.' 'Ours' struck me as clever.
'I suppose I shall see him again if he is to meet you at Liverpool,' I continued.
'Well, it will be bad if he doesn't.'
It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did: that only came later. So I remarked that I had not seen him for so many years that it was very possible I should not know him.'
'Well, I have not seen him for a great many years, but I expect I shall know him all the same.'
'Oh, with you it's different,' I rejoined, smiling at her. 'Hasn't he been back since those days?'
'I don't know what days you mean.'
'When I knew him in Paris—ages ago. He was a pupil of the École des Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture.'
'Well, he is studying it still,' said Grace Mavis.
'Hasn't he learned it yet?'
'I don't know what he has learned. I shall see.' Then she added: 'Architecture is very difficult and he is tremendously thorough.'
'Oh, yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have become quite a foreigner, if it's so many years since he has been at home.'
'Oh, he is not changeable. If he were changeable–' But here my interlocutress paused. I suspect she had been going to say that if he were changeable he would have given her up long ago. After an instant she went on: 'He wouldn't have stuck so to his profession. You can't make much by it.'
'You can't make much?'
'It doesn't make you rich.'
'Oh, of course you have got to practise it—and to practise it long.'
'Yes—so Mr. Porterfield says.'
Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh—they were so serene an implication that the gentleman in question did not live up to his principles. But I checked myself, asking my companion if she expected to remain in Europe long—to live there.
'Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it has taken me to go out.'
'And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit.'
Miss Mavis looked at me a moment. 'Didn't mother talk!'
'It was all very interesting.'
She continued to look at me. 'You don't think that.'
'What have I to gain by saying it if I don't?'
'Oh, men have always something to gain.'
'You make me feel a terrible failure, then! I hope at any rate that it gives you pleasure—the idea of seeing foreign lands.'
'Mercy—I should think so.'
'It's a pity our ship is not one of the fast ones, if you are impatient.'
She was silent a moment; then she exclaimed, 'Oh, I guess it will be fast enough!'
That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-trunk, which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me. It was nine o'clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had already taken us into the latitude of the longer days. She had made her nest admirably and lay upon her sofa in a becoming dressing-gown and cap, resting from her labours. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her cabin, which smelt good (such was the refinement of her art), and she had a secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without shipping seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the idea, if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation (we promised to lend each other books and I assured her familiarly that I should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day), and pitied me for having to mingle in society. She judged this to be a limited privilege, for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a view of our fellow-passengers.
'Oh, I'm an inveterate, almost a professional observer,' I replied, 'and with that vice I am as well occupied as an old woman in the sun with her knitting. It puts it in my power, in any situation, to see things. I shall see them even here and I shall come down very often and tell you about them. You are not interested to-day, but you will be to-morrow, for a ship is a great school of gossip. You won't believe the number of researches and problems you will be engaged in by the middle of the voyage.'
'I? Never in the world—lying here with my nose in a book and never seeing anything.'
'You will participate at second hand. You will see through my eyes, hang upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and indignations. I have an idea that your young lady is the person on board who will interest me most.'
'Mine, indeed! She has not been near me since we left the dock.'
'Well, she is very curious.'
'You have such cold-blooded terms,' Mrs. Nettlepoint murmured. 'Elle ne sait pas se conduire; she ought to have come to ask about me.'
'Yes, since you are under her care,' I said, smiling. 'As for her not knowing how to behave—well, that's exactly what we shall see.'
'You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her.'
'Don't say that—don't say that.'
Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at me a moment. 'Why do you speak so solemnly?'
In return I considered her. 'I will tell you before we land. And have you seen much of your son?'
'Oh yes, he has come in several times. He seems very much pleased. He has got a cabin to himself.'
'That's great luck,' I said, 'but I have an idea he is always in luck. I was sure I should have to offer him the second berth in my room.'
'And you wouldn't have enjoyed that, because you don't like him,' Mrs. Nettlepoint took upon herself to say.
'What put that into your head?'
'It isn't in my head—it's in my heart, my cœur de mère. We guess those things. You think he's selfish—I could see it last night.'
'Dear lady,' I said, 'I have no general ideas about him at all. He is just one of the phenomena I am going to observe. He seems to me a very fine young man. However,' I added, 'since you have mentioned last night I will admit that I thought he rather tantalised you. He played with your suspense.'
'Why, he came at the last just to please me,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
I was silent a moment. 'Are you sure it was for your sake?'
'Ah, perhaps it was for yours!'
'When he went out on the balcony with that girl perhaps she asked him to come,' I continued.
'Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him?'
'I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he will tell me—for he will never tell me anything: he is not one of those who tell.'
'If she didn't ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
'Yes, if she didn't. But you say that to protect Jasper, not to protect her,' I continued, smiling.
'You are cold-blooded—it's uncanny!' my companion exclaimed.
'Ah, this is nothing yet! Wait a while—you'll see. At sea in general I'm awful—I pass the limits. If I have outraged her in thought I will jump overboard. There are ways of asking (a man doesn't need to tell a woman that) without the crude words.'
'I don't know what you suppose between them,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
'Nothing but what was visible on the surface. It transpired, as the newspapers say, that they were old friends.'
'He met her at some promiscuous party—I asked him about it afterwards. She is not a person he could ever think of seriously.'
'That's exactly what I believe.'
'You don't observe—you imagine,' Mrs. Nettlepoint pursued.' How do you reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool on an errand of love?'
'I don't for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on the impulse of the moment. She is going out to Liverpool on an errand of marriage; that is not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love, especially for one who happens to have had a personal impression of the gentleman she is engaged to.'
'Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her capable—on no evidence—of violating them.'
'Ah, you don't understand the shades of things,' I rejoined. 'Decencies and violations—there is no need for such heavy artillery! I can perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words—"I'm in dreadful spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant for you too."'
'And why is she in dreadful spirits?'
'She isn't!' I replied, laughing.
'What is she doing?'
'She is walking with your son.'
Mrs. Nettlepoint said nothing for a moment; then she broke out, inconsequently—'Ah, she's horrid!'
'No, she's charming!' I protested.
'You mean she's "curious"?'
'Well, for me it's the same thing!'
This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was cold-blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit. She knew nothing about anything, but her intentions were good and she was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous. And Mrs. Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the exclamation 'Poor young thing!'
'You think she is a good deal to be pitied, then?'
'Well, her story sounds dreary—she told me a great deal of it. She fell to talking little by little and went from one thing to another. She's in that situation when a girl must open herself—to some woman.'
'Hasn't she got Jasper?' I inquired.
'He isn't a woman. You strike me as jealous of him,' my companion added.
'I daresay he thinks so—or will before the end. Ah no—ah no!' And I asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as a flirt. She gave me no answer, but went on to remark that it was odd and interesting to her to see the way a girl like Grace Mavis resembled the girls of the kind she herself knew better, the girls of 'society,' at the same time that she differed from them; and the way the differences and resemblances were mixed up, so that on certain questions you couldn't tell where you would find her. You would think she would feel as you did because you had found her feeling so, and then suddenly, in regard to some other matter (which was yet quite the same) she would be terribly wanting. Mrs. Nettlepoint proceeded to observe (to such idle speculations does the vanity of a sea-voyage give encouragement) that she wondered whether it were better to be an ordinary girl very well brought up or an extraordinary girl not brought up at all.
'Oh, I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances.'
'It is true that if you are very well brought up you are not ordinary,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. 'You are a lady, at any rate. C'est toujours ça.'
'And Miss Mavis isn't one—is that what you mean?'
'Well—you have seen her mother.'
'Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the mother doesn't count.'
'Precisely; and that's bad.'
'I see what you mean. But isn't it rather hard? If your mother doesn't know anything it is better you should be independent of her, and yet if you are that constitutes a bad note.' I added that Mrs. Mavis had appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had said and done everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and respectful. Grace's attitude (so far as her mother was concerned) had been eminently decent.
'Yes, but she couldn't bear it,' said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
'Ah, if you know it I may confess that she has told me as much.'
Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. 'Told you? There's one of the things they do!'
'Well, it was only a word. Won't you let me know whether you think she's a flirt?'
'Find out for yourself, since you pretend to study folks.'
'Oh, your judgment would probably not at all determine mine. It's in regard to yourself that I ask it.'
'In regard to myself?'
'To see the length of maternal immorality.'
Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to repeat my words. 'Maternal immorality?'
'You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage, and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make it all right. He will have no responsibility.'
'Heavens, how you analyse! I haven't in the least your passion for making up my mind.'
'Then if you chance it you'll be more immoral still.'
'Your reasoning is strange,' said the poor lady; 'when it was you who tried to put it into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.'
