Charles Horton had been a Californian and a man of exuberant vitality and speech. His wife, who had loved him and admired him for every contrast to the contained people among whom she had been brought up, had adopted something of his vigorous way of expressing himself.
"Are you?" she repeated.
It was not Mrs. Loring's way to evade things, but she was so really interested in Eleanor's point of view that instead of answering this question she said:
"What are your reasons for inferring that Morris is ruining his life?"
Mrs. Horton tossed her book aside, and clasped her crisp, capable looking little brown hands about one knee.
"'Reasons'!" said she. "Aren't facts enough for you? Isn't a love-sick boy of twenty-six who marries a woman years older pretty well smashing things up for himself?"
"Sophy Chesney is only thirty, Eleanor."
"Oh, what a hair-splitter you are, Grace! Four years' difference on the wrong side—the woman's side, is a big chasm ... say what you will."
"There have been very happy marriages of that sort, Eleanor, and with far greater difference in age. There was Miss Thackeray's marriage with Mr. Ritchie——"
"Oh, do go on!" said Mrs. Horton, with an outward snuffing of contemptuous breath. "Give us some more specimens from literature—George Eliot and Mr. Cross for example."