“He is my oldest friend; he doesn’t admire me in the least—so I am very fond of him. I christened him ‘Alceste,’ and he retaliated with ‘Célimène.’ He is forty odd; a bachelor; he lives in a square stone house, and taught me very nearly everything I know. My Greek is almost as good as my skirt dancing.”
“The square-stone gentleman didn’t teach you skirt-dancing, I suppose. I begin to place him. The editor; the family friend; the misanthrope.”
“Yes, my ‘Alceste.’ He has reason for misanthropy. His life has been a succession of disappointments. I am one of them, I fear.”
“Dear me, Camelia!” Mrs. Fox-Darriel sat upright, “have you ever dallied with this provincial Diogenes?”
Miss Paton smiled over the supposition. “His disappointments are moral, not amorous. Why do I tell you this, I wonder?”
“To show me that you don’t care for him perhaps,” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, who to tell the truth, was rather alarmed. Since she had resigned herself to a planetary, a reflected brilliancy, her star at least must never wane; its orbit must widen. Camelia’s whole manner seemed suddenly suspicious. She was evidently waiting for this person, pleased, evidently, to talk of him, and though Camelia might be trusted for a full appreciation of her future’s possibilities, Mrs. Fox-Darriel was hardly satisfied by the frankness of her “Oh! but I do care for him; he preoccupies me.”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel reflected for some moments on the dangers of country-house propinquity and retrospective intimacy before saying pleasantly—
“What does he look like?”
Camelia laughed again, soothing Mrs. Fox-Darriel somewhat by the good-humored glance which seemed to pierce with amusement the anxiety on her behalf.
“His eyes are thunderous; his lips pale with suppressed anger.”