"For Cynthia's sake." How lightly he said the words! In after-days no words were fraught with deeper and sadder suggestion for him; none bowed him down more heavily with a sense of obligation and shame and passionate remorse than these—"For Cynthia's sake."
He went that night to Madame della Scala's house and sat for a full hour, in a little conservatory lighted with Chinese lanterns, alone with Cynthia West.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"I don't know how it is," grumbled the General, "but Enid looks scarcely any better than she did before this precious engagement of hers. You made me think that she would be perfectly happy if she had her own way; but I must say, Flossy, that I see no improvement."
Flossy, lying on a sofa and holding a fan over her eyes, as though to shut out the sight of her husband's bowed shoulders and venerable white head, answered languidly—
"You forget that you did only half of what you were expected to do. You would not consent to a definite engagement until she should be eighteen years old; she is eighteen now, and yet you are holding back. Suspense of such a sort is very trying to a girl."
The General, who had been standing beside her, sat down in a large arm-chair and looked very vexed.
"I don't care," he said obstinately—"I'm not going to have my little girl disposed of in such a hurry! She shall not be engaged to anybody just yet; and until she is twenty or twenty-one she sha'nt be married. Why, she's had no girlhood at all! She's only just out of the schoolroom now. Eighteen is nothing!"