"
"Mind!" said Jack, "why you wind that girl round your little
finger. She writes about you as if you were an archangel; and look
here, I am sorry I took a gloomy view. It's all right; you were the
right person. Freddy Guthrie would never have done for Maud--he's
in a great way about it still, but I tell him he may be thankful to
have escaped. Maud is a mountain-top kind of girl; she could never
have got on without a lot of aspirations, she couldn't have settled
down to the country-house kind of life. You are a sort of
privilege, you know, and all that; Freddy Guthrie would never have
been a privilege."
"That's rather a horror!" said Howard; "you mustn't let these
things out; you make me nervous!"
Jack laughed. "If your brother-in-law mayn't say this to you, I
don't know who may. But seriously, really quite seriously, you are
a bigger person than I thought. I'll tell you why. I had a kind of
feeling that you ought not to let me speak to you as you do, that
you ought to have snapped my head off. And then you seemed too much
upset by what I said. I don't know if it was your tact; but you had
your own way all the time, with me and with everybody; you seemed
to give way at every point, and yet you carried out your programme.
I thought you hadn't much backbone--there, the cat's out; and now I
find that we were all dancing to your music. I like people to do
that, and it amuses me to find that I danced as obediently as
anyone, when I really thought I could make you do as I wished.
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