“Do you know you kill me, Harold?” Mrs. Brookenham woefully interposed. But it was with the same remote melancholy that she asked in the next breath: “It wasn’t an INVITATION--to Brander?”
“It’s as I told you. She said she’d write, fixing a time; but she never did write.”
“It comes to the same thing? DOES it?--that’s the question. If on my note she didn’t write--that’s what I mean. Should one simply take it that one’s wanted? I like to have these things FROM you, mother. I do, I believe, everything you say; but to feel safe and right I must just HAVE them. Any one WOULD want me, eh?”
Mrs. Brookenham had opened her eyes, but she still attached them to the cornice. “If she hadn’t wanted you she’d have written to keep you off. In a great house like that there’s always room.”
The young man watched her a moment. “How you DO like to tuck us in and then sit up yourself! What do you want to do, anyway? What ARE you up to, mummy?”
She rose at this, turning her eyes about the room as if from the extremity of martyrdom or the wistfulness of some deep thought. Yet when she spoke it was with a different expression, an expression that would have served for an observer as a marked illustration of that disconnectedness of her parts which frequently was laughable even to the degree of contributing to her social success. “You’ve spent then more than four pounds in five days. It was on Friday I gave them to you. What in the world do you suppose is going to become of me?”
Harold continued to look at her as if the question demanded some answer really helpful. “Do we live beyond our means?”
She now moved her gaze to the floor. “Will you PLEASE get away?”
“Anything to assist you. Only, if I SHOULD find I’m not wanted--?”
She met his look after an instant, and the wan loveliness and vagueness of her own had never been greater. “BE wanted, and you won’t find it. You’re odious, but you’re not a fool.”
He put his arms about her now for farewell, and she submitted as if it was absolutely indifferent to her to whose bosom she was pressed. “You do, dearest,” he laughed, “say such sweet things!” And with that he reached the door, on opening which he pulled up at a sound from below. “The Duchess! She’s coming up.”