“And how about him?” suggested Mrs. Carling.  There was no reply.

“Don’t you think he may care for you, or be getting to?”

Mary frowned slightly, half closing her eyes and stirring a little uneasily in her chair.

“He hasn’t said anything to me on the subject,” she replied evasively.

“Would that be necessary?” asked her sister.

“Perhaps not,” was the reply, “if the fact were very obvious.”

“Isn’t it?” persisted Mrs. Carling, with unusual tenacity.

“Well,” said the girl, “to be quite frank with you, I have thought once or twice that he entertained some such idea—­that is—­no, I don’t mean to put it just that way.  I mean that once or twice something has occurred to give me that idea.  That isn’t very coherent, is it?  But even if it be so,” she went on after a moment, with a wave of her hands, “what of it?  What does it signify?  And if it does signify, what can I do about it?”

“You have thought about it, then?” said her sister.

“As much as I have told you,” she answered.  “I am not a very sentimental person, I think, and not very much on the lookout for such things, but I know there is such a thing as a man’s taking a fancy to a young woman under circumstances which bring them often together, and I have been led to believe that it isn’t necessarily fatal to the man even if nothing comes of it.  But be that as it may,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders, “what can I do about it?  I can’t say to Mr. Lenox, ’I think you ought not to come here so much,’ unless I give a reason for it, and I think we have come to the conclusion that there is no reason except the danger—­to put it in so many words—­of his falling in love with me.  I couldn’t quite say that to him, could I?”

“No, I suppose not,” acquiesced Mrs. Carling faintly.

“No, I should say not,” remarked the girl.  “If he were to say anything to me in the way of—­declaration is the word, isn’t it?—­it would be another matter.  But there is no danger of that.”

“Why not, if he is fond of you?” asked her sister.

“Because,” said Mary, with an emphatic nod, “I won’t let him,” which assertion was rather weakened by her adding, “and he wouldn’t, if I would.”

“I don’t understand,” said her sister.

“Well,” said Mary, “I don’t pretend to know all that goes on in his mind; but allowing, or rather conjecturing, that he does care for me in the way you mean, I haven’t the least fear of his telling me so, and one of the reasons is this, that he is wholly dependent upon his father, with no other prospect for years to come.”

“I had the idea somehow,” said Mrs. Carling, “that his father was very well-to-do.  The young man gives one the impression of a person who has always had everything that he wanted.”