"How eternally sentimental we are! Well, yes, it is. But capacities differ. I daresay she doesn't know she's deficient, and she certainly won't imagine that her mother has given her away."
"I suppose I deserve that, but I had to talk to somebody. And really it's best to choose a man; sometimes it stops there then."
"Why not your husband? No? Ah, he has too many opportunities of reminding you of the indiscretion! You were quite right to talk to me. We shall look on at what happens with all the greater interest because we've discussed it. And, as I've said, I'm decidedly hopeful."
"We might have developed her affections when she was a child. I'm sure we might."
"Oh, I shall go! You send for a clergyman!"
Mrs. Selford shook her head sadly, even while she smiled. She could not be beguiled from her idea, nor from the remorse that it brought. The pictures, the dogs, and sentimental squabbling with her husband had figured too largely in the household; she connected with this fact the disposition which she found in Anna.
"Being a bit hard isn't a bad thing for your happiness," Caylesham added as a last consolation.
Anna herself came in. No consciousness of deficiency seemed to afflict her; she felt no need of a development of her affections or of being more in love with Walter Blake. On the contrary she exhibited to Caylesham's shrewd eyes a remarkable picture of efficiency and of contentment. She had known what she wanted, she had discerned what means to use in order to get it, and she had achieved it. A perfect self-confidence assured her that she would be successful in dealing with it; her serene air, her trim figure and decisive movements gave the impression that here at least was a mortal who, if she did not deserve success, could command it. Caylesham looked on her with admiration—rather that than liking—as he acknowledged her very considerable qualities. The thing which was wanting was what in a picture he would have called "atmosphere." But here again her luck came in, or, rather, her clear vision; it was not fair to call it luck. The man she had pitched upon—that was fair, and Caylesham declined to withdraw the expression—at the time when she pitched upon him, was in a panic about "atmosphere." He had found too much of it elsewhere, and was uneasy about it in himself. He was not asking for softness, for tenderness, for ready accessibility to emotion or to waves of feeling. Her cleverness had turned to account even the drawback which made Caylesham, in the midst of his commendation, conscious that he would not choose to be her husband—or perhaps her son either.
"You'll make a splendid head of the family," he told her cheerfully. "You'll keep them all in most excellent order."
She chose to consider that he had exercised a bad influence over Walter Blake, and treated him distantly. Caylesham supported the entire injustice of her implied charge with good-humour.