“I know you will understand me, Di, and I am not afraid of your laughing at these ravings. But if you did I should not care. It is such a comfort to say these things about him, to exalt him, and get him in the true light at last.
Before Imogene fell asleep, Mrs. Bowen came to her in the dark, and softly closed the door that opened from the girl’s room into Effie’s. She sat down on the bed, and began to speak at once, as if she knew Imogene must be awake. “I thought you would come to me, Imogene; but as you didn’t, I have come to you, for if you can go to sleep with hard thoughts of me tonight, I can’t let you. You need me for your friend, and I wish to be your friend; it would be wicked in me to be anything else; I would give the world if your mother were here; but I tried to make my letter to her everything that it should be. If you don’t think it is, I will write it over in the morning.”
“No,” said the girl coldly; “it will do very well. I don’t wish to trouble you so much.”
“Oh, how can you speak so to me? Do you think that I blame Mr. Colville? Is that it? I don’t ask you—I shall never ask you—how he came to remain, but I know that he has acted truthfully and delicately. I knew him long before you did, and no one need take his part with me.” This was not perhaps what Mrs. Bowen meant to say when she began. “I have told you all along what I thought, but if you imagine that I am not satisfied with Mr. Colville, you are very much mistaken. I can’t burst out into praises of him to your mother: that would be very patronising and very bad taste. Can’t you see that it would?”
“Oh yes.”
Mrs. Bowen lingered, as if she expected Imogene to say something more, but she did not, and Mrs. Bowen rose. “Then I hope we understand each other,” she said, and went out of the room.
XVI
When Colville came in the morning, Mrs. Bowen received him. They shook hands, and their eyes met in the intercepting glance of the night before.
“Imogene will be here in a moment,” she said, with a naturalness that made him awkward and conscious.
“Oh, there is no haste,” he answered uncouthly. “That is, I am very glad of the chance to speak a moment with you, and to ask your—to profit by what you think best. I know you are not very well pleased with me, and I don’t know that I can ever put myself in a better light with you—the true light. It seems that there are some things we must not do even for the truth’s sake. But that’s neither here nor there. What I am most anxious for is not to take a shadow of advantage of this child’s—of Imogene’s inexperience, and her remoteness from her family. I feel that I must in some sort protect her from herself. Yes—that is my idea. But I have to do this in so many ways that I hardly know how to begin. I should be very willing, if you thought best, to go away and stay away till she has heard from her people, and let her have that time to think it all over again. She is very young—so much younger than I! Or, if you thought it better, I would stay, and let her remain free while I held myself bound to any decision of hers. I am anxious to do what is right. At the same time”—he smiled ruefully—“there is such a thing as being so disinterested that one may seem uninterested. I may leave her so very free that she may begin to suspect that I want a little freedom myself. What shall I do? I wish to act with your approval.”
Mrs. Bowen had listened with acquiescence and intelligence that might well have looked like sympathy, as she sat fingering the top of her hand-screen, with her eyelids fallen. She lifted them to say, “I have told you that I will not advise you in any way. I cannot. I have no longer any wish in this matter. I must still remain in the place of Imogene’s mother; but I will do only what you wish. Please understand that, and don’t ask me for advice any more. It is painful.” She drew her lower lip in a little, and let the screen fall into her lap.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bowen, to do anything—say anything—that is painful to you,” Colville began. “You know that I would give the world to please you—” The words escaped him and left him staring at her.
“What are you saying to me, Theodore Colville?” she exclaimed, flashing a full-eyed glance upon him, and then breaking into a laugh, as unnatural for her. “Really,
