He had ceased to be amusing—he was really too inhuman.
His perfect look, which had floated him so long, was practically perfect still; but one had long since for every occasion taken it for granted.
Nothing could have better shown than the actual how right one had been.
He looked exactly as much as usual—all pink and silver as to skin and hair, all straitness and starch as to figure and dress—the man in the world least connected with anything unpleasant.
He was so particularly the English gentleman and the fortunate, settled, normal person.
Seen at a foreign table d'hote, he suggested but one thing:
"In what perfection England produces them!"
He had kind, safe eyes, and a voice which, for all its clean fulness, told, in a manner, the happy history of its having never had once to raise itself.
Life had met him so, half-way, and had turned round so to walk with him, placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to choose the pace.
Those who knew him a little said,
"How he does dress!"—those who knew him better said,
"How does he?"
The one stray gleam of comedy just now in his daughter's eyes was the funny feeling he momentarily made her have of being herself "looked up" by him in sordid lodgings.
For a minute after he came in it was as if the place were her own and he the visitor with susceptibilities.
He gave you funny feelings, he had indescribable arts, that quite turned the tables: that had been always how he came to see her mother so long as her mother would see him.
He came from places they had often not known about, but he patronised Lexham Gardens.
Kate's only actual expression of impatience, however, was
"I'm glad you're so much better!"
"I'm not so much better, my dear—I'm exceedingly unwell; the proof of which is, precisely, that I've been out to the chemist's—that beastly fellow at the corner." So Mr. Croy showed he could qualify the humble hand that assuaged him. "I'm taking something he has made up for me.
It's just why I've sent for you—that you may see me as I really am."
"Oh papa, it's long since I've ceased to see you otherwise than as you really are!
I think we've all arrived by this time at the right word for that:
'You're beautiful—n'en parlons plus.'
You're as beautiful as ever—you look lovely."
He judged meanwhile her own appearance, as she knew she could always trust him to do; recognising, estimating, sometimes disapproving, what she wore, showing her the interest he continued to take in her.
He might really take none at all, yet she virtually knew herself the creature in the world to whom he was least indifferent.
She had often enough wondered what on earth, at the pass he had reached, could give him pleasure, and she had come back, on these occasions, to that.
It gave him pleasure that she was handsome, that she was, in her way, a sensible value.
It was at least as marked, nevertheless, that he derived none from similar conditions, so far as they were similar, in his other child.
Poor Marian might be handsome, but he certainly didn't care.
The hitch here, of course, was that, with whatever beauty, her sister, widowed and almost in want, with four bouncing children, was not a sensible value.
She asked him, the next thing, how long he had been in his actual quarters, though aware of how little it mattered, how little any answer he might make would probably have in common with the truth.
She failed in fact to notice his answer, truthful or not, already occupied as she was with what she had on her own side to say to him.
This was really what had made her wait—what superseded the small remainder of her resentment at his constant practical impertinence; the result of all of which was that, within a minute, she had brought it out.
"Yes—even now I'm willing to go with you.
I don't know what you may have wished to say to me, and even if you hadn't written you would within a day or two have heard from me.
Things have happened, and I've only waited, for seeing you, till I should be quite sure.
I am quite sure.
I'll go with you."
It produced an effect.
"Go with me where?"
"Anywhere.
I'll stay with you.
Even here."
She had taken off her gloves and, as if she had arrived with her plan, she sat down.
Lionel Croy hung about in his disengaged way—hovered there as if, in consequence of her words, looking for a pretext to back out easily: on which she immediately saw she had discounted, as it might be called, what he had himself been preparing.
He wished her not to come to him, still less to settle with him, and had sent for her to give her up with some style and state; a part of the beauty of which, however, was to have been his sacrifice to her own detachment.
There was no style, no state, unless she wished to forsake him.
His idea had accordingly been to surrender her to her wish with all nobleness; it had by no means been to have positively to keep her off.
She cared, however, not a straw for his embarrassment—feeling how little, on her own part, she was moved by charity.