struggles. "Why, Lillias Bellard, are you engaged to Mr. Craybourne?"
"Well, no. But we're seeing."
III
CROMBIE, when his wife had rejoined him, sat dripping, as it were, from the deluge of conjectures, facts, and reflections which she had hastened to pour out on him after coming away from Lillias.
"Anything more outspoken, more boldfaced, more unblushing! If those are the manners that she is teaching the youth out there under the guise of elocution!"
"There does seem to be a sort of brazen ingenuousness in it," Crombie allowed. " But you can't say there's anything deceitful. And that's what you dreaded."
" I don't know whether I dreaded it. But I did hope that if Lillias had anything to conceal she would manage it with a little finesse, a little delicacy. I hoped that if she was going to bring the burden of a love-affair into the house with her, she would have the grace to carry it off so that it shouldn't seem to be a burden. But the brutal frankness with which she dumps it all on me!"
" I don't call it brutal," Crombie said, with an air of reasoning, "though it is certainly frank. I think it has its charm. It's deliciously honest, and it ought to be a relief to you, after the duplicity you've been dreading — the finesse, as you call it."
" I call it duplicity, pretending to come here for a week, so as to bridge over between visits, and meaning all the time to make us a base of operations, with him at the Saco Shore House, so that they can see each other constantly under my very wing. If that isn't finesse, I don't know what it is!"
" Then, I don't see what you have to complain of, with frankness and finesse both on hand in one and the same Mephistophelian innocent."
"Oh, Archie!" Mrs. Crombie whimpered. "It's the care! It's the terrible disappointment of a broken-up summer! It's having the disturbance of it going on under our roof day after day, when I was looking forward to such a complete rest with you, dear! It's enough to make me wish we were back at The Surges. You had better sell this place at once."
"There'll be time enough to think about that and to change our minds twice or thrice. Mountain property hasn't the instant convertibility of shore property. I should find some difficulty in giving this place away if I was in a hurry to get rid of it. Fortunately I'm not. Did she tell you how they happened to meet?"
"Oh, romantically enough, I believe. After his last failure in ranching he was quite at leisure, and he came into town to pass the time at the hotel, and think. There he heard of Lillias's lectures, or talks, which were open to the public — really, I can't imagine it, but her lectures seem to be quite a fad, out there — and he went to one of them, and then he went to all that were left of them. At last he got himself introduced; though why he didn't at first she couldn't understand, unless it was his English shyness. After he did it seems to have been plain sailing, as far as they've gone."
"And how far have they gone?"
"Well, she doesn't seem to know, exactly. The case appears to be that she has some doubts of marriage itself."
"Oh, come, now! A pretty girl like that?"
" I don't see what her prettiness has to do with it. A great many girls are that way, now. They look at it very cool-headedly. They don't like to give up their liberty unless they're certain of their happiness, and they see, if they look round them at all, that there's a great deal of unhappiness in marriage."
"They could always get divorced."
"Yes, but they don't like that — nice girls don't. They'd rather not go in for it, to begin with. It seems that Lillias has a great idea of being honest with herself. Really, to hear her talk — I wish you could have been at the key-hole!"
" I wish I could — if I may be as honest as Lillias."
"It seems that it wasn't the hard work, or the beginning at the bottom, or the personal exhibition, as Mrs. Kemble calls it, which kept her from going on the stage. There was a manager quite ready to take her from the dramatic school and feature her, as she said, in a new play — "
"Don't go too far back!"
"I'm not, but you can't understand if I don't. — It was the perpetual pretense; what she felt was the essential and final falsity of a life that consisted in the representation of emotions that were not really felt. In short, the insincerity."
"Well?"
"Well— where was I? Oh yes! She felt that if she had no doubt about marrying Mr. Craybourne, she would have no misgivings about marriage; or if she had perfect faith in marriage, she could confidently trust herself in marrying him. But as she has neither, she can't."
Crombie rubbed his forehead, as if to clear away a cloud within. " I don't believe I've followed you," he said.
" Why, he's offered himself, but she hasn't thought it out yet."
"And she's got him here to help her think?"
"That is where the sinuosity comes in; that is where Lillias shows herself a true girl."
Crombie laughed. "And what does she expect us to do?"
" Do you know what she said to me? Not just in so many words, but that was the sum and substance of it. She made a long, sly preamble about having always thought us the happiest married couple she had ever seen, the most united and harmonious; and she wanted Mr. Craybourne to know us, too."
" As a sort of object-lesson? I'm not sure that I should like to be studied. It would make me conscious."
"Of course," Mrs. Crombie said, with a seriousness which amazed him, "it's very flattering."
" It's taffy of the most barefaced description. Now, my dear, you look out for that girl. Don't trust her beyond your sight. Does she expect us to take any active part in regard to this Englishman of hers?"
"Oh no. And I quite agree with you about her slyness. There can't be so much smoke without some fire, and I shall certainly watch her. She wants to commit us to some scheme in her mother's absence, and I am not going to be used. She will find that out."
The talk of the Crombies ended for the night in a very exhaustive analysis of the relations of Lillias to her more immediate family, then as remote in space as close in blood, and in a just recognition of how very little the girl, left to shift for herself, owed her mother in obedience or deference. Mrs. Crombie led the conclusion in censure of her sister, with those reserves in behalf of her peculiarities which a woman sometimes likes to make in judging her next of kin, as if their eccentricities somehow reflected picturesqueness if not praise upon herself. Lillias, she said, had come honestly by anything that was original in her; and she did not know but that if the girl was now hesitating in a way that was ridiculous about accepting Mr. Craybourne, she was certainly improving upon her mother, who used to be always hesitating about people after she had accepted them, and sometimes after she had married them. In the case of Lillias's father, she reminded Crombie, Aggie's misgiving had gone so far as to have the character of a provisional separation for a whole year before his death. She asked Crombie if he did not think that this showed a real honesty in the child; and he said that he did. By this time he was so sleepy that he would have said anything.
He
