"
He looked at me suspiciously.
"My honest opinion?"
"Perhaps you may have something new to tell me to-day. Perhaps you have
proposed, and been accepted. May I congratulate you? No? Ah, the devil
trust you--haha!"
"So that was what you were afraid of?"
"Afraid of? My dear Doctor!"
Pause.
"No," he said, "I have not proposed and been accepted. But you have,
perhaps. There's no proposing to Edwarda--she will take whomever she has
a fancy for. Did you take her for a peasant girl? You have met her, and
seen for yourself. She is a child that's had too little whipping in her
time, and a woman of many moods. Cold? No fear of that! Warm? Ice, I
say. What is she, then? A slip of a girl, sixteen or seventeen--
exactly. But try to make an impression on that slip of a girl, and she
will laugh you to scorn for your trouble. Even her father can do nothing
with her; she obeys him outwardly, but, in point of fact, 'tis she
herself that rules. She says you have eyes like an animal..."
"You're wrong there--it was someone else said I had eyes like an
animal."
"Someone else? Who?"
"I don't know. One of her girl friends. No, it was not Edwarda said
that. Wait a bit though; perhaps, after all, it was Edwarda..."
"When you look at her, it makes her feel so and so, she says.
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