"I can understand all you tell me," she said when he reached the point of confiding his hard past to her."I can understand it because I knew some one who had to fight for himself just that way, only perhaps it was harder because he wasn't educated as you are.""Did he--confide in you?" Dudevant ventured, with delicate hesitation.
"You are so kind I am sure he did, Mademoiselle.""He told me about it because he knew I wanted to hear," she answered.
"I was very fond of him," she added, and her kind gravity was quite unshaded by any embarrassment."I was right-down fond of him."His emotion rendered him for a moment indiscreet, to her immediate realization and regret, as was evident by his breaking off in the midst of his question.
"And now--are you?"
"Yes, I always shall be, Mr.Dudevant."
His adoration naturally only deepened itself as all hope at once receded, as it could not but recede before the absolute pellucid truth of her.
"However much he likes me, he will get over it in time.People do, when they know how things stand," she was thinking, with maternal sympathy.
It did him no bitter harm to help her with her efforts at learning what she most needed, and he found her intelligence and modest power of concentration remarkable.A singularly clear knowledge of her own specialized requirements was a practical background to them both.She had no desire to shine; she was merely steadily bent on acquiring as immediately as possible a comprehension of nouns, verbs, and phrases that would be useful to her father.The manner in which she applied herself, and assimilated what it was her quietly fixed intention to assimilate, bespoke her possession of a brain the powers of which being concentrated on large affairs might have accomplished almost startling results.There was, however, nothing startling in her intentions, and ambition did not touch her.Yet, as she went with Hutchinson from one country to another, more than one man of affairs had it borne in upon him that her young slimness and her silence represented an unanticipated knowledge of points under discussion which might wisely be considered as a factor in all decisions for or against.To realize that a soft-cheeked, child-eyed girl was an element to regard privately in discussions connected with the sale of, or the royalties paid on, a valuable patent appeared in some minds to be a situation not without flavor.She was the kind of little person a man naturally made love to, and a girl who was made love to in a clever manner frequently became amenable to reason, and might be persuaded to use her influence in the direction most desired.But such male financiers as began with this idea discovered that they had been led into errors of judgment through lack of familiarity with the variations of type.One personable young man of title, who had just been disappointed in a desirable marriage with a fortune, being made aware that the invention was likely to arrive at amazing results, was sufficiently rash to approach Mr.Hutchinson with formal proposals.
Having a truly British respect for the lofty in place, and not being sufficiently familiar with titled personages to discriminate swiftly between the large and the small, Joseph Hutchinson was somewhat unduly elated.
"The chap's a count, lass," he said."Tha'u'd go back to Manchester a countess.""I've heard they're nearly all counts in these countries," commented Ann."And there's countesses that have to do their own washing, in a manner of speaking.You send him to me, Father."When the young man came, and compared the fine little nose of Miss Hutchinson with the large and bony structure dominating the countenance of the German heiress he had lost, also when he gazed into the clearness of the infantile blue eyes, his spirits rose.He felt himself en veine; he was equal to attacking the situation.He felt that he approached it with alluring and chivalric delicacy.He almost believed all that he said.
But the pellucid blueness of the gaze that met his was confusingly unstirred by any shade of suitable timidity or emotion.There was something in the lovely, sedate little creature, something so undisturbed and matter of fact, that it frightened him, because he suddenly felt like a fool whose folly had been found out.
"That's downright silly," remarked Little Ann, not allowing him to escape from her glance, which unhesitatingly summed up him and his situation."And you know it is.You don't know anything about me, and you wouldn't like me if you did.And I shouldn't like you.We're too different.Please go away, and don't say anything more about it.Ishouldn't have patience to talk it over."
"Father," she said that night, "if ever I get married at all, there's only one person I'm going to marry.You know that." And she would say no more.
By the time they returned to England, the placing of the invention in divers countries had been arranged in a manner which gave assurance of a fortune for its owners on a foundation not likely to have established itself in more adverse circumstances.Mr.Hutchinson had really driven some admirable bargains, and had secured advantages which to his last hour he would believe could have been achieved only by Lancashire shrewdness and Lancashire ability to "see as far through a mile-stone as most chaps, an' a bit farther." The way in which he had never allowed himself to be "done" caused him at times to chuckle himself almost purple with self-congratulation.
"They got to know what they was dealing with, them chaps.They was sharp, but Joe was a bit sharper," he would say.
They found letters waiting for them when they reached London.
"There's one fro' thy grandmother," Hutchinson said, in dealing out the package."She's written to thee pretty steady for an old un."This was true.Letters from her had followed them from one place to another.This was a thick one in an envelop of good size.
"Aren't tha going to read it? " he asked.