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‘Is it true that you wish to remain with Effie and Tishy? That’s what your mother calls it when she means that you will give me up.’

‘How can I give you up?’ the girl demanded. ‘Why can’t we go on being friends, as I asked you the evening you dined here?’

‘What do you mean by friends?’

‘Well, not making everything impossible.’

‘You didn’t think anything impossible of old,’ Raymond rejoined, bitterly. ‘I thought you liked me then, and I have even thought so since.’

‘I like you more than I like any one. I like you so much that it’s my principal happiness.’

‘Then why are there impossibilities?’

‘Oh, some day I’ll tell you!’ said Dora, with a quick sigh. ‘Perhaps after Tishy is married. And meanwhile, are you not going to remain in Paris, at any rate? Isn’t your work here? You are not here for me only. You can come to the house often. That’s what I mean by our being friends.’

Her companion sat looking at her with a gloomy stare, as if he were trying to make up the deficiencies in her logic.

‘After Tishy is married? I don’t see what that has to do with it. Tishy is little more than a baby; she may not be married for ten years.’

‘That is very true.’

‘And you dispose of the interval by a simple “meanwhile”? My dear Dora, your talk is strange,’ Raymond continued, with his voice passionately lowered. ‘And I may come to the house–often? How often do you mean–in ten years? Five times–or even twenty?’ He saw that her eyes were filling with tears, but he went on: ‘It has been coming over me little by little (I notice things very much if I have a reason), and now I think I understand your mother’s system.’

‘Don’t say anything against my mother,’ the girl broke in, beseechingly.

‘I shall not say anything unjust. That is if I am unjust you must tell me. This is my idea, and your speaking of Tishy’s marriage confirms it. To begin with she has had immense plans for you all; she wanted each of you to be a princess or a duchess–I mean a good one. But she has had to give you up.’

‘No one has asked for me,’ said Dora, with unexpected honesty.

‘I don’t believe it. Dozens of fellows have asked for you, and you have shaken your head in that divine way (divine for me, I mean) in which you shook it the other night.’

‘My mother has never said an unkind word to me in her life,’ the girl declared, in answer to this.

‘I never said she had, and I don’t know why you take the precaution of telling me so. But whatever you tell me or don’t tell me,’ Raymond pursued, ‘there is one thing I see very well–that so long as you won’t marry a duke Cousin Maria has found means to prevent you from marrying till your sisters have made rare alliances.’

‘Has found means?’ Dora repeated, as if she really wondered what was in his thought.

‘Of course I mean only through your affection for her. How she works that, you know best yourself.’

‘It’s delightful to have a mother of whom every one is so fond,’ said Dora, smiling.

‘She is a most remarkable woman. Don’t think for a moment that I don’t appreciate her. You don’t want to quarrel with her, and I daresay you are right.’

‘Why, Raymond, of course I’m right!’

‘It proves you are not madly in love with me. It seems to me that for you I would have quarrelled—-‘

‘Raymond, Raymond!’ she interrupted, with the tears again rising.

He sat looking at her, and then he said, ‘Well, when they are married?’

‘I don’t know the future–I don’t know what may happen.’

‘You mean that Tishy is so small–she doesn’t grow–and will therefore be difficult? Yes, she is small.’ There was bitterness in his heart, but he laughed at his own words. ‘However, Effie ought to go off easily,’ he went on, as Dora said nothing. ‘I really wonder that, with the Marquise and all, she hasn’t gone off yet. This thing, to-night, ought to do a great deal for her.’