"A woman? There"s _her_!" Mrs. Briss replied with more force than grammar. "I know," she briskly, almost breezily added, "that I said she wouldn"t do (as I had originally said she would do better than any one), when you a while ago mentioned her. But that was to save her."
"And you don"t care now," I smiled, "if she"s lost!"
She hesitated. "She _is_ lost. But she can take care of herself."
I could but helplessly think of her. "I"m afraid indeed that, with what you"ve done with her, _I_ can"t take care of her. But why is she now to the purpose," I articulately wondered, "any more than she was?"
"Why? On the very system you yourself laid down. When we took him for brilliant, she couldn"t be. But now that we see him as he is----"
"We can only see her also as _she_ is?" Well, I tried, as far as my amus.e.m.e.nt would permit, so to see her; but still there were difficulties. "Possibly!" I at most conceded. "Do you owe your discovery, however, wholly to my system? My system, where so much made for protection," I explained, "wasn"t intended to have the effect of exposure."
"It appears to have been at all events intended," my companion returned, "to have the effect of driving me to the wall; and the consequence of _that_ effect is n.o.body"s fault but your own."
She was all logic now, and I could easily see, between my light and my darkness, how she would remain so. Yet I was scarce satisfied. "And it"s only on "that effect"----?"
"That I"ve made up my mind?" She was positively free at last to enjoy my discomfort. "Wouldn"t it be surely, if your ideas were worth anything, enough? But it isn"t," she added, "only on that. It"s on something else."
I had after an instant extracted from this the single meaning it could appear to yield. "I"m to understand that you _know_?"
"That they"re intimate enough for anything?" She faltered, but she brought it out. "I know."
It was the oddest thing in the world for a little, the way this affected me without my at all believing it. It was preposterous, hang though it would with her somersault, and she had quite succeeded in giving it the note of sincerity. It was the mere sound of it that, as I felt even at the time, made it a little of a blow--a blow of the smart of which I was conscious just long enough inwardly to murmur: "What if she _should_ be right?" She had for these seconds the advantage of stirring within me the memory of her having indeed, the day previous, at Paddington, "known" as I hadn"t. It had been really on what she _then_ knew that we originally started, and an element of our start had been that I admired her freedom. The form of it, at least--so beautifully had she recovered herself--was all there now. Well, I at any rate reflected, it wasn"t the form that need trouble me, and I quickly enough put her a question that related only to the matter. "Of course if she is--it _is_ smash!"
"And haven"t you yet got used to its being?"
I kept my eyes on her; I traced the buried figure in the ruins. "She"s good enough for a fool; and so"--I made it out--"is he! If he _is_ the same a.s.s--yes--they _might_ be."
"_And_ he is," said Mrs. Briss, "the same a.s.s!"
I continued to look at her. "He would have no need then of her having transformed and inspired him."
"Or of her having _de_formed and idiotised herself," my friend subjoined.
Oh, how it sharpened my look! "No, no--she wouldn"t need that."
"The great point is that _he_ wouldn"t!" Mrs. Briss laughed.
I kept it up. "She would do perfectly."
Mrs. Briss was not behind. "My dear man, she has _got_ to do!"
This was brisker still, but I held my way. "Almost anyone would do."
It seemed for a little, between humour and sadness, to strike her.
"Almost anyone _would_. Still," she less pensively declared, "we want the right one."
"Surely; the right one"--I could only echo it. "But how," I then proceeded, "has it happily been confirmed to you?"
It pulled her up a trifle. ""Confirmed"----?"
"That he"s her lover."
My eyes had been meeting hers without, as it were, hers quite meeting mine. But at this there had to be intercourse. "By my husband."
It pulled _me_ up a trifle. "Brissenden knows?"
She hesitated; then, as if at my tone, gave a laugh. "Don"t you suppose I"ve told him?"
I really couldn"t but admire her. "Ah--so you _have_ talked!"
It didn"t confound her. "One"s husband isn"t talk. You"re cruel moreover," she continued, "to my joke. It was Briss, poor dear, who talked--though, I mean, only to me. _He_ knows."
I cast about. "Since when?"
But she had it ready. "Since this evening."
Once more I couldn"t but smile. "Just in time then! And the _way_ he knows----?"
"Oh, the way!"--she had at this a slight drop. But she came up again. "I take his word."
"You haven"t then asked him?"
"The beauty of it was--half an hour ago, upstairs--that I _hadn"t_ to ask. He came out with it himself, and _that_--to give you the whole thing--was, if you like, my moment. He dropped it on me," she continued to explain, "without in the least, sweet innocent, knowing what he was doing; more, at least, that is, than give her away."
"Which," I concurred, "was comparatively nothing!"
But she had no ear for irony, and she made out still more of her story.
"He"s simple--but he sees."
"And when he sees"--I completed the picture--"he luckily tells."
She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but without prejudice to his acuteness and to what had been in him moreover a natural revulsion. "He has seen, in short; there comes some chance when one does. His, as luckily as you please, came this evening. If you ask me what it showed him you ask more than _I"ve_ either cared or had time to ask. Do you consider, for that matter"--she put it to me--"that one does ask?" As her high smoothness--such was the wonder of this reascendancy--almost deprived me of my means, she was wise and gentle with me. "Let us leave it alone."
I fairly, while my look at her turned rueful, scratched my head. "Don"t you think it a little late for that?"
"Late for everything!" she impatiently said. "But there you are."
I fixed the floor. There indeed I was. But I tried to stay there--just there only--as short a time as possible. Something, moreover, after all, caught me up. "But if Brissenden already knew----?"
"If he knew----?" She still gave me, without prejudice to her ingenuity--and indeed it was a part of this--all the work she could.
"Why, that Long and Lady John were thick?"
"Ah, then," she cried, "you admit they _are_!"
"Am I not admitting everything you tell me? But the more I admit," I explained, "the more I must understand. It"s _to_ admit, you see, that I inquire. If Briss came down with Lady John yesterday to oblige Mr.
Long----"
"He didn"t come," she interrupted, "to oblige Mr. Long!"