Читать книгу The Awkward Age онлайн

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"Then he won't lend him money," said Brookenham with all his grimness.

This contingency too she considered. "You make me feel as if I wished he would—which is too dreadful. And I don't think he really likes ME!" she went on."

"Oh!" her husband again ejaculated. "I mean not utterly REALLY. He has to try to. But it won't make any difference," she next remarked. "Do you mean his trying?"

"No, I mean his not succeeding. He'll be just the same." She saw it steadily and saw it whole. "On account of mamma."

Brookenham also, with his perfect propriety, put it before himself. "And will he—on account of your mother—also like ME?"

She weighed it. "No, Edward." She covered him with her loveliest expression. "No, not really either. But it won't make any difference." This time she had pulled him up.

"Not if he doesn't like Harold or like you or like me?" Edward clearly found himself able to accept only the premise.

"He'll be perfectly loyal. It will be the advantage of mamma!" Mrs. Brookenham cried. "Mamma, Edward," she brought out with a flash of solemnity—"mamma WAS wonderful. There have been times when I've always felt her still with us, but Mr. Longdon makes it somehow so real. Whether she's with me or not, at any rate, she's with HIM; so that when HE'S with me, don't you see—?"