deceitfully.

Why shouldn't I tell Jane what I really thought of Cousin James and
discuss him broadly and frankly? I don't know! Lately I don't want to
think about him or have anybody mention him in my presence. I've got a
consciousness of him way off in a corner of me somewhere and I'm just
brooding over it. Everybody in town has been in this house since Jane
has been here, all the time, and I haven't seen him alone for ages it
seems. Maybe that's why I have had to make a desert island inside myself
to take him to.

"And I have been thinking since you told me of the situation in which he
and Mrs. Carruthers have been placed by this financial catastrophe, how
wonderful it will be if love really does come to them, when her grief is
healed by time. He will rear her interesting children into women that
will be invaluable to the commonwealth," Jane continued as she tied a
blue bow on the end of her long black plait.

"Do you think that there--there are any signs of--of such a thing yet?"
I asked with pitiful weakness as I wilted down into my pillow.

"Just a bit in his manner to her, though I may be influenced in my
judgment by the evident suitability of such a solution of the
situation," she answered as she settled herself back against one of the
posts of my high old bed and looked me clean through and through, even
unto the shores of that desert island itself.

"I hope you have been noting these different emotional situations and
reactions among your friends carefully in your record, Evelina," she
continued in an interested and biological tone of voice and expression