"If you ask me, I think the two young people are as much in love as any young couple could be."
"I know my son's feelings; he has made me aware of them. And Miss Driver thinks this marriage desirable?"
"She charged me to express the great pleasure she would take in it, if it met with your approval."
He sat silent for a moment, his hand up to his mouth as he bit his finger nail. For reasons I have given, to follow the trend of his thoughts was quite beyond my powers of discernment.
"I suppose I seem to her—and perhaps to you—a very ineffectual person?" he went on in his even voice, with his dull eyes (like a gas jet turned low to save the light!)—"I have the bad luck to stand half-way between two schools—two generations—of ideas. When I was born, men of my order still had fortunes; nowadays many of them have to set out to make fortunes—or at least careers—like other people. I've been stranded half-way. The fortunes of my house are gone; I've neither the power nor the taste to try to retrieve them; and I'm too old. Public life used to be the thing, but I've not the manners for that." His chilly smile came again. "So I sit on, watching the ruins falling into more utter ruin still."
It was not for me to say anything to that. But I had a new sympathy for him. His room, again, seemed to add a silent confirmation of all he said.
"Once I did try to retrieve the situation. You know how—and how the attempt ended. It served me right—and I've learned the lesson. Now the same woman asks me for my son."
"Not for herself!"
"No, thank God!"
He said that very deliberately—not carried away, meaning to let me have it for all it was worth. Well, my diplomacy failed—or I fear so. I did not like to hear him thank God for being quit of Jenny.