ully
avoided. What was the use of having serious intentions when not the
slightest notice was taken of the most compromising behavior? It was
true that he was perfectly at liberty to see more of Edith than an
Englishman ever does of any woman not related to him, and to say and do
a thousand things any one of which at home would have necessitated a
proposal or instant flight. But no importance whatever seemed to be
attached to them here, and he was utterly at a loss how to make his
seriousness felt. Yet it was quite clear that if there was to be any
wooing done, he would have to do it,--go every step of the way himself,
with no assistance from Miss Bascombe. "How on earth am I to show her
that I care for her?" he thought. "Other men send her dozens of
bouquets, and box after box of expensive sweets, and loads of books, and
music without end, and they come to see her continually, and take her
about everywhere, and are entirely devoted to her. I wonder what
fellows over here do when they are serious? How do they make themselves
understood when they go on in this way habitually? It is a most
extraordinary state of affairs! And neither party seems to feel in the
least compromised by it. There is that fellow Clinch, who fairly lives
at the Bascombes', and when I asked her if she was engaged to him she
said, 'Engaged to George Clinch? What an idea! _No_. What put that in
your head? He is a nice fellow, and I like him immensely, but there's
nothing of that sort between us. What made you think there was? And when
I explained, she said, 'Oh, _that's_ nothing! He is just as nice to lots
of other girls.' And when I suggested to him that he was attached to
her, he said, 'Edith Bascombe? Oh, no! She is a great friend of mine,
and a charming girl, but I have never thought of that, nor has she. I go
there a good deal, but I have never paid her any marked attention.' No
marked attention, indeed! Nothing seems to mean anything here: it is
worse than being in England, where everything means something. No, it
isn't, either. I vow that when I am at the Clintons' in Surrey I
scarcely dare offer the girls so much as a muffin, and if I ask the
carroty one, Beatrice, the simplest question, she blushes and stammers
as if I were proposing out of hand. But what am I to do? I can't sing
and take to serenading Edith on moonlit nights with a guitar and a blue
ribbon around my neck. I can't push her into the river that I may pull
her out again. I dare