"
"Coarse, you are sometimes, Poff--nowadays."
"It's exactly what I mean. I can understand the kind of curator's
interest an Oriental finds in shepherding a large establishment, but
to spend my days looking after one person who ought to be able to
look after herself--"
"She's very young."
"She's quite grown up. Anyhow I'm not a moral nursemaid."
"If you leave her about and go abroad--"
"Has she been talking to you, mother?"
"The thing shows."
"But about my going abroad?"
"She said something, my little Poff."
Lady Marayne suddenly perceived that beneath Benham's indifference
was something strung very tight, as though he had been thinking
inordinately. He weighed his words before he spoke again. "If
Amanda chooses to threaten me with a sort of conditional infidelity,
I don't see that it ought to change the plans I have made for my
life. . . ."
7
"No aristocrat has any right to be jealous," Benham wrote. "If he
chances to be mated with a woman who does not see his vision or
naturally go his way, he has no right to expect her, much less to
compel her to go his way.
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