"
"Why didn't you do it, then?" asked Stanmer.
"Why don't you?"
"To be a proper rejoinder to my question," he said, rather neatly, "yours
should be asked twenty-five years hence."
"It remains perfectly true that at a given moment I was capable of doing
as I say. That was what she wanted--a rich, susceptible, credulous,
convenient young Englishman established near her _en permanence_. And
yet," I added, "I must do her complete justice. I honestly believe she
was fond of me." At this Stanmer got up and walked to the window; he
stood looking out a moment, and then he turned round. "You know she was
older than I," I went on. "Madame Scarabelli is older than you. One day
in the garden, her mother asked me in an angry tone why I disliked
Camerino; for I had been at no pains to conceal my feeling about him, and
something had just happened to bring it out. 'I dislike him,' I said,
'because you like him so much.' 'I assure you I don't like him,' she
answered. 'He has all the appearance of being your lover,' I retorted.
It was a brutal speech, certainly, but any other man in my place would
have made it. She took it very strangely; she turned pale, but she was
not indignant. 'How can he be my lover after what he has done?' she
asked.
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