between them, before they had done, the Murray Brushes, all zeal and
sincerity, all interest in her interesting case, would dish, would
ruin, would utterly destroy her. He wouldn't have needed to go on, for
the force and truth of this; but he did go on--he was as crashingly
consistent as a motorcar without a brake. He was visibly in love
with the idea of what they might do for her and of the rare "social"
opportunity that they would, by the same stroke, embrace. How he had
been offhand with it, how he had made it parenthetic, that he didn't
happen "personally" to know Basil French--as if it would have been at
all likely he _should_ know him, even _im_ personally, and as if he
could conceal from her the fact that, since she had made him her
overture, this gentleman's name supremely baited her hook! Oh, they
would help Julia Bride if they could--they would do their remarkable
best; but they would at any rate have made his acquaintance over it,
and she might indeed leave the rest to their thoroughness. He would
already have known, he would already have heard; her appeal, she was
more and more sure, wouldn't have come to him as a revelation. He had
already talked it over with _her_, with Miss Lindeck, to whom the
Frenches, in their fortress, had never been accessible, and his whole
attitude bristled, to Julia's eyes, with the betrayal of her hand, her
voice, her pressure, her calculation. His tone, in fact, as he talked,
fairly thrust these things into her face. "But you must see her for
yourself. You'll judge her. You'll love her. My dear child"--he
brought it all out, and if he spoke of children he might, in his
candor, have been himself infantine--"my dear child, she's the person
to do it for you. Make it over to her; but," he laughed, "of course
see her first! Couldn't you," he wound up--for they were now near
their gate, where she was to leave him--"couldn't you just simply make
us meet him, at tea say, informally; just _us_ alone, as pleasant old
friends of whom you'd have so naturally and frankly spoken to him: and