Choate had quite forgotten Aunt Patricia. She had been too far in the depths of Poland for Esther to summon up her shade. Possibly it was a dangerous shade to summon, lest the substance follow. But now she sketched Aunt Patricia with hesitating candour, but so that he lost none of her undesirability, and he listened with a painstaking courtesy.
"You say you're afraid of her?" he said, at the end. "Let her come. She may not want to stay."
"She is so—different," faltered Esther. She looked at him with humid eyes. It was apparent that Aunt Patricia was different in a way not to be commended.
Now Choate thought he saw how it was.
"You mean she's been banging about Europe," he said, "living in pensions, trailing round with second-rate professionals. I get that idea, at least. Am I right?"
"She's frightfully bohemian, of course," said Esther. "Yes, that's what I did mean."
"But she's not young, you know," said Choate, in an indulgent kindliness Esther was quite sure he kept for her alone. "She won't be very rackety. People don't want the same things after they're sixty."
"She smokes," said Esther, in a burst of confidence. "She did years ago when nice women weren't doing it."
He smiled at this, but tenderly. He didn't leave Addington very often, but he did know what a blaze the vestals of the time keep up.
"No matter," said he, "so long as you don't."