“Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when I am wrong,” said Rosa Dartle. “You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?”
“Well,” I replied; “perhaps it was a little dry.”
“Oh! and that’s a reason why you want relief and change—excitement and all that?” said she. “Ah! very true! But isn’t it a little—Eh?—for him; I don’t mean you?”
A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking, with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.
“Don’t it—I don’t say that it does , mind I want to know—don’t it rather engross him? Don’t it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting—eh?” With another quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my innermost thoughts.
“Miss Dartle,” I returned, “pray do not think—”
“I don’t!” she said. “Oh dear me, don’t suppose that I think anything! I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don’t state any opinion. I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it’s not so? Well! I am very glad to know it.”
“It certainly is not the fact,” said I, perplexed, “that I am accountable for Steerforth’s having been away from home longer than usual—if he has been: which I really don’t know at this moment, unless I understand it from you. I have not seen him this long while, until last night.”
“No?”
“Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!”