"We may as well put a pleasant face on the matter and swallow our bitter pill," says Floyd, with a smile of concession.
"Do you know," says Violet, afterward, with a touch of timidity that is quite entrancing, "I cannot help admiring Marcia's courage in marrying a man she loved, even if he was not—and he is quite dreadful," with a shivering incoherence. "I saw him when he came to Canada, and he made me think of an ogre. Yet it would be very hard if the whole world hated you for something you could not help, like a deformity."
"I have known several instances of men worse deformed than Mr. Wilmarth being extravagantly loved," says Grandon, thinking how nearly this man might have been her fate, and wondering if she could have reconciled herself to it. "But we are very apt to connect warped bodies with warped minds, and I must confess to a distaste for either. I should like to be sure it was—regard that brought them together."
She remembers that Marcia is rather peculiar, always taking sudden fancies and then dropping them. This she never can give up, never.
"What thought so perplexes that wise little face," asks her husband.
"Oh, she must have loved him or she could not have married him," she says, still thinking of Marcia.
"Does that follow, I wonder?"
"Why, she had her choice, you know, there was no other reason for her to marry him," she answers, innocently.
He wonders just now what Violet St. Vincent would have done had a choice been hers! He is well aware that she obeyed her father, and that he was not distasteful to her. She is sweet and dutiful and fond, not at all exacting, and has the obedience of a well-trained child. Does he care for anything more? Could he have it if he did care, if he desired it ardently?
Mrs. Jasper Wilmarth's reception is a crush. It would seem that no one stayed away, and it looks as if they might have brought cousins and aunts. She is in pale blue silk and velvet, and looks very pretty, for Marcia brightens up wonderfully with becoming dress. Mr. Wilmarth's tailor has made the best of his figure, and he brings out the training of years agone, when he had some ambitions. Society decides that it must have been merely a whim, for the man is certainly well enough, and really adores her. Even Laura wonders how Marcia managed to inspire this regard, and decides that the marriage is not so bad, after all, and she shall never have Marcia to chaperone.