swer,
truthful or not, already occupied as she was with what she had on her
own side to say to him. This was really what had made her wait--what
superseded the small remainder of her resentment at his constant
practical impertinence; the result of all of which was that, within a
minute, she had brought it out. "Yes--even now I'm willing to go with
you. I don't know what you may have wished to say to me, and even if
you hadn't written you would within a day or two have heard from me.
Things have happened, and I've only waited, for seeing you, till I
should be quite sure. I _am_ quite sure. I'll go with you."

It produced an effect. "Go with me where?"

"Anywhere. I'll stay with you. Even here." She had taken off her gloves
and, as if she had arrived with her plan, she sat down.

Lionel Croy hung about in his disengaged way--hovered there as if, in
consequence of her words, looking for a pretext to back out easily: on
which she immediately saw she had discounted, as it might be called,
what he had himself been preparing. He wished her not to come to him,
still less to settle with him, and had sent for her to give her up with
some style and state; a part of the beauty of which, however, was to
have been his sacrifice to her own detachment. There was no style, no
state, unless she wished to forsake him. His idea had accordingly been
to surrender her to her wish with all nobleness; it had by no means
been to have positively to keep her off. She cared, however, not a
straw for his embarrassment--feeling how little, on her own part, she
was moved by charity. She had seen him, first and last, in so many
attitudes that she could now deprive him quite without compunction of
the luxury of a new one. Yet she felt the disconcerted gasp in his tone
as he said: "Oh my child, I can never consent to that!"

"What then are you going to do?"

"I'm turning it over," said Lionel Croy. "You may imagine if I'm not
thinking."

"Haven't you thought then," his daughter asked, "of what I speak of? I
mean of my being ready."

Standing before her with his hands behind him and his legs a little
apart, he swayed slightly to and fro, inclined toward her as if rising
on his toes. It had an effect of conscientious deliberation. "No. I
haven't. I couldn't. I wouldn't." It was so respectable, a show that
she felt afresh, and with the memory of their old despair, the despair
at home, how little his appearance ever by any chance told about him.
His