It was agreeable to hear, but he would not admit it.
"Poor old Edna," he said. "I don't feel exactly in a position to criticize. This woman must be clever."
"Clever!" exclaimed Miss Wellington. "It's uncanny! Instantly she obtained an almost hypnotic influence over Durland and Antonia. Even Dolly was on the point of succumbing—if it had not been that the woman overreached herself in her affair with young Williams. Between ourselves, Anthony, though I haven't said this to Edna, I don't feel at all sure that that affair did not go a great deal further than the kiss."
Anthony frowned in silence. This was almost more than he could bear. He said to himself that it was the idea of Antonia being brought into contact with such a situation that disgusted him.
Cora was kind enough to sit in his drawing-room and wait while he had a bath and dressed. It was a nice room and she thought as she waited how she would rearrange the furniture if ever she should come to live there. There were photographs of the children about—Antonia as a baby, Durland in his first sailor suit, a picture of Edna with the three children grouped about her like English royalties.
She was wearing the pearls.
Then Anthony came out of his room, looking handsome and sleek and brown and very well dressed in blue serge; and they went out and had luncheon together, and then started at once for their drive of a hundred miles in Anthony's car.
She answered all his questions—and one he did not ask. She volunteered: "I must confess, Anthony, when I first saw this girl—saw how unsuitable she was—I felt your wonderful judgment must have been clouded by your having fallen in love with her."
"Recollect, please," he returned, "that even if it had been the girl I saw, I had only seen her once."
"Don't people fall in love at first sight?"