'But you,--when did you arrive here?'
'Here, at this house, I arrived the night before last. On Tuesday I reached Liverpool. There I found that you were probably in London, and so I came on. I have come only to see you. I can understand that you should have been estranged from me. That journey home is now so long ago! Our meeting in New York was so short and wretched. I would not tell you because you then were poor yourself, but at that moment I was penniless. I have got my own now out from the very teeth of robbers.' As she said this, she looked as though she could be very persistent in claiming her own,--or what she might think to be her own. 'I could not get across to San Francisco as I said I would, and when I was there you had quarrelled with your uncle and returned. And now I am here. I at any rate have been faithful.' As she said this his arm was again thrown over her, so as to press her head to his knee. 'And now,' she said, 'tell me about yourself?'
His position was embarrassing and very odious to himself. Had he done his duty properly, he would gently have pushed her from him, have sprung to his legs, and have declared that, however faulty might have been his previous conduct, he now found himself bound to make her understand that he did not intend to become her husband. But he was either too much of a man or too little of a man for conduct such as that. He did make the avowal to himself, even at that moment as she sat there. Let the matter go as it would, she should never be his wife. He would marry no one unless it was Hetta Carbury. But he did not at all know how to get this said with proper emphasis, and yet with properly apologetic courtesy. 'I am engaged here about this railway,' he said. 'You have heard, I suppose, of our projected scheme?'
'Heard of it! San Francisco is full of it. Hamilton Fisker is the great man of the day there, and, when I left, your uncle was buying a villa for seventy-four thousand dollars. And yet they say that the best of it all has been transferred to you Londoners. Many there are very hard upon Fisker for coming here and doing as he did.'
'It's doing very well, I believe,' said Paul, with some feeling of shame, as he thought how very little he knew about it.