“And you think that Sir Arthur’s millions would emphasize the enjoyment?”
“Widen it, certainly. But don’t be gross, Frances. A great deal depends on him. I am not offering myself for sale, you know.”
“No, I don’t think you would. You have no need to.”
“He would really be glaringly golden, wouldn’t he, were he not draped with the mossy antiquity of his name?” said Camelia, drawing a white magnolia flower within the window frame, and bending her head to the scented cup.
“An ideal husband, from every point of view,” Mrs. Fox-Darriel resumed; “clever, very clever, and very good—rather overpoweringly good, Camelia.”
“I think goodness a most charming phenomenon, I shouldn’t mind studying it in a husband.”
“Mrs. Jedsley is good. Why don’t you study her?”
“There is nothing phenomenal in her goodness, it is a product of circumstance only. There is Mary,” Camelia added, tipping her chair a little towards the window for a clearer view of the lawn below. “Mary in a Liberty silk, of yellow-green, and smocked. Why, Mary, why wear a Liberty gown, especially smocked?”
“I have sometimes suspected that your colorless little cousin is here to play the part of a discord that resolves into and heightens your harmony,” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel; “or is it the post of whipping-boy that she fills?”
Camelia continued to look from the window placidly, only raising her eyebrows a little.