human
Tell him I'm here and that I want to have a look at him. Use my name so that he'll see it's urgent. Then you can sign the telegram with your own. Cousin Cherry! Stuff!
gpt
Oui, mon bon Rodney. It was love at first sight. The thing hadn't happened to me for years.
human
Had it been in the habit of happening?
gpt
In the habit of happening--that's too much to say. I may have had a little toquade from time to time--I don't say no--of an innocence!--or nearly of an innocence!--Mais que voulez-vous?--a woman in my position!--a widow since I was so high!--and exposed to the most flattering attentions. You know nothing about it over here. L'amour est l'enfant de Bohème, as the song says, and, whatever you can say for Waverton and Cambridge and Boston, you'll admit--
human
One does the best one can, Vic. We're children of opportunity as well as enfants de Bohème. If your chances have been more generous, and I presume more tempting, than ours, it isn't kind of you to come back and taunt us.
gpt
Don't talk about tempting, Rodney. You can't imagine how tiresome those men become--always on the hunt for money--always trying to find a wife who'll support them without their having to work. I speak of the good people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If I hadn't money--they'd slam the door on me like that. She indicated the violence of the act by gesture.
human
As it is, they smother me. There are three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment--Anne Marie de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece as so much saved? Henry's getting into such a hole seemed to me providential--gives me the chance to snatch something away from them before they--and when it's to go ultimately to _him_--
gpt
The young fellow you've taken such a fancy to?
human
You'd have taken a fancy to him, too, if you'd known only men who make it a trade to ask all and give next to nothing in return. You'd be smitten to the core by a man who asks nothing and offers all, if he were as ugly as a gargoyle. But when he takes the form of a blond Hercules, with eyes blue as the myosotis, and a mustache--mais une moustache!--and with no idea whatever of the bigness of the thing he's doing! It was the thunderbolt, Rodney--le coup de foudre--and no wonder!
gpt
I hope you told him so.
human
I was very stiff with him. I sent him about his business just like that. She snapped her fingers.
gpt
But I only meant it with reserves. I let him see how I had been wronged--how cruelly Olivia had misunderstood me--but I showed him, too, how I could forgive. She tore at her breast as though to lay bare her heart.
human
Oh, I impressed him--not all at once perhaps--but little by little--
gpt
As he came to know you.
human
I wouldn't let him go away. He stayed at the inn in the village two weeks and more. It's an old chef of mine who keeps it. And I learned all his secrets. He thought he was throwing dust in my eyes, but he didn't throw a grain. As if I couldn't see who was in love with who--after all my experience! Ah, mon bon Rodney, if I'd been fifty years younger! And yet if I'd been fifty years younger, I shouldn't have judged him at his worth. He's the type to which you can do justice only when you've a standard of comparison, n'est-ce pas? It's in putting him beside other men--the best--even Ashley over there--that you see how big he is.