Now Brocklebank in his motor was an earnest and a silent man. Straker, left to himself, caught fragments of conversation in the rear. Miss Tarrant began it. "Why did you give up your seat?" "You see why," said Furnival. Straker could see him saying it, flushed and fervent. Then Furnival went one better, and overdid it. "There's nothing I wouldn't give up for a chance like this." Straker heard Philippa laughing softly. He knew she meant him to hear her, he knew she was saying to him, "Could anything be more absurd than the creature that I've got in here?" There was a pause, and then Furnival broke out again: "I've seen Mrs. Viveash off." "That," said Miss Tarrant reprovingly, "was the least you could do." Furnival made that little fierce, inarticulate sound of his before he spoke. "I hope you're satisfied. I hope I've done enough to please you." "Oh, quite enough. I shouldn't attempt to do _anything_ more if I were you." After that there was silence, in which Straker felt that Furnival was raging. VII Fanny Brocklebank came to him the next morning in the library, where he had hidden himself. She was agitated. "Put that book down," she said. "I want to talk to you." Straker obeyed. "Jimmy--I'm fond of Philippa. I am, really." "Well--what's up?" "Philippa's making a fool of herself and she doesn't know it." "Trust Philippa!" "To know it?" "To make a fool of anybody on earth--except herself." "This is different. It's Larry Furnival." "It is. And did you ever see such a spectacle of folly?" "He doesn't understand her. That's where the folly comes in." "He's not alone in it." But Fanny was past the consolations of his cynicism. Her face, not formed for gravity, was grave. "He's got an idea in his head. An awful one. I'm convinced he thinks she isn't proper." "Oh, I say!" "Well, really--considering that he doesn't know her--I can't altogether blame him. I told her so straight out." "What did she say?" "She said how funny it will be when he finds out how proper she is." "So it will, won't it?" Fanny considered the point. "It's not half as funny as she thinks it. And, funniness and all, she didn't like it." "You can hardly expect her to," said Straker. "Of course," said Fanny, musing, "there's a sort of innocence about him, or else he couldn't think it." Straker admitted that, as far as Philippa went, that might be said of him. "That's why I hate somehow to see him made a fool of. It doesn't seem fair play, you know. It's taking advantage of his innocence." Straker _had_ to laugh, for really, Furny's innocence! "He always was," Fanny meditated aloud, "a fool about women." "Oh, well, then," said Straker cheerfully. "She can't make him----" "She can. She does. She draws out all the folly in him. I'm fond of Philippa----"