you wouldn't worry. If you can see Gerald
Fane in the part of my beau you must be cracked. And if you think I'm
soft on him, you're only a little bit less cracked. Can't you see we're
just friends? It's nice for him to come here and it's nice for us to
have him. We want friends, don't we?"

"All I say is don't go ahead with your eyes shut till you find before
you know it that you're landed in a case of, 'Mother, I can't live
without him!' For, Nell, it won't do, you know it won't."

"My dearest girl, of course I know, but not half so well as he knows!
Bless you, Hat, do you forget all Leslie told us about him and his
affair? And do you forget my little affair? Do you suppose either of us
wants to try again?"

"Indeed, I hope you will try again, both of you. But not together, Nell.
I've got the man all picked out for you; you know perfectly I mean Tom
Bewick. There's the one for you, Nell. Big, healthy, kind. Good sense.
Good temper. Your own kind of person, Nell, and not a queer bird from a
menagerie. Don't go and spoil everything by getting tangled up over
here. You know as well as I do that Gerald Fane, take him just as a man,
can't hold a candle to Doctor Tom."

"I've never thought of comparing them. I don't see any use in doing it.
Tom's Tom and Gerald's Gerald. So far as Gerald goes, you can set your
heart at rest and bank on this: I know just as well as you do, and he
knows just as well as I do, that we couldn't pull in harness together
any more than--just as you say, a fish and a bird. Neither of us is
thinking of such a thing. But why mustn't a fish and a bird have
anything to say to each other? He might like the cut of her fins and she
might fancy the color of his wings. They could sympathize together,
couldn't they, if nothing else?" Aurora's eyebrows had with this tried
to signify her entire capacity to take care of herself and her own
business.

But not wishing to rouse any further uneasiness in her friend, she no
more after that spoke frankly of Gerald whenever he came into her mind.
And when she declined Estelle's invitation to go with her to Mlle.
Durand's, where she would hear the pupils of the latter recite Corneille
and Racine, she did not tell her what she had planned to do instead,
fully intending, however, to reveal it later.

* * * * *

Gerald meanwhile did not flatter himself imagining Aurora unhappy
because he stayed away longer than had lately