"Very well. I'll pack it up and put it away in my trunks against the day it is needed. That is settled."
"So you can be provoking, can you? I thought you were a serious Englishman, with a good deal of the man in you."
"But you don't want the man; and as I can play many parts, I brought with me the society dude in case he should be handy."
"You are angry because I won't let you interfere with my affairs, eh? So you have your pet little weaknesses, too."
"Why don't you care to speak of fashionable marriages? You mentioned one that was in the making when I was here last."
"You think it a pleasant subject for a jest?" she cried, resentfully.
"Scarcely a fair hit. You have just told me you were not yourself then--and I thought and hoped it had been abandoned, and was to be forgotten like the rest of what you said."
To this she made no immediate reply, but after a pause, asked slowly and earnestly--
"And do you take enough interest in my future to feel serious about such a project?"
"There would not be much of the man in me and far less of the cousin, and none of the friend, if I did not," I returned.
"You have seen me once and known me three days."
"You forget the first time I saw you, Sarita. I do not. I never shall--and never wish to. There are some wounds that are long in the making; others that are made in a flash: and the latter may endure longer than the former." She threw a penetrating glance at me, sighed, and turned away again.
"I wonder if you will ever understand me," she said, half wistfully. "I will not have your help. I have told you."
"It is already packed away--waiting," I returned, lightly. But the light tone jarred, and she tapped her foot and frowned in impatient protest. I smiled. "Why play at this game of pretences?" I asked. "I am going to help you, whether you will or no; and you are going to take my help, whether you will or no. And you are going to give up that--well, the need for us to talk about projected marriages, fashionable or otherwise. You know quite well that I am just as much in earnest as you are; and already you have read me well enough to be perfectly aware that having made that use of my name, you have given me the opportunity to help you which I shall not fail to use. Why then pretend? Let us be frank. I'll set the example. I have come to tell you of something that you must abandon--a plan that originated with you: the part of you, that is, that goes to make up half of the mythical Ferdinand Carbonnell. A plan that the real Ferdinand Carbonnell will not sanction."