I've done for her!" The reader will have noted my fondness, in all
cases, for the explanations of things; as an example of which I had my
theory here that she was disappointed in the girl. Where then had her
special calculation failed? As she couldn't possibly have wished her
prettier or more pleasing, the pang must have been for her not having
made a successful use of her gifts. Had she expected her to "land" a
prince the day after leaving the schoolroom? There was after all plenty
of time for this, with Linda but two-and-twenty. It didn't occur to me
to wonder if the source of her mother's tepidity was that the young lady
had not turned out so nice a nature as she had hoped, because in the
first place Linda struck me as perfectly innocent, and because in the
second I wasn't paid, in the French phrase, for supposing Louisa Pallant
much concerned on that score. The last hypothesis I should have invoked
was that of private despair at bad moral symptoms. And in relation to
Linda's nature I had before me the daily spectacle of her manner with my
nephew. It was as charming as it could be without betrayal of a desire
to lead him on. She was as familiar as a cousin, but as a distant one--a
cousin who had been brought up to observe degrees. She was so much
cleverer than Archie that she couldn't help laughing at him, but she
didn't laugh enough to exclude variety, being well aware, no doubt, that
a woman's cleverness most shines in contrast with a man's stupidity when
she pretends to take that stupidity for her law. Linda Pallant moreover
was not a chatterbox; as she knew the value of many things she knew the
value of intervals. There were a good many in the conversation of these
young persons; my nephew's own speech, to say nothing of his thought,
abounding in comfortable lapses; so that I sometimes wondered how their
association was kept at that pitch of continuity of which it gave the
impression. It was friendly enough, evidently, when Archie sat near her
--near enough for low murmurs, had such risen to his lips--and watched
her with interested eyes and with freedom not to try too hard to make