"Weighed in the scales, of course," she said, "they represent a tremendous amount of friendship."
"Aren't your daughters an interest?"
"Too adorable, of course,—so adorable that I sometimes wish I'd never been born."
The problem as it presented itself to Lord Henry was rightly: how could this quinquagenarian be given a son whom she could worship? To Mrs. Delarayne the problem was: how could she induce this young man to overcome the obvious objection consisting in the disparity of their ages? She could read her own nature no further than this.
"Have you never any feelings of loneliness?" she demanded. "Don't you ever reflect upon the happiness you might secure yourself and somebody else by being decently married?"
"I might be tempted to marry. It is perfectly possible," Lord Henry replied. "Hitherto the only thing that has deterred me has been my vanity. It would be so horrible to watch the love a woman might bear me slowly turning to indifference,—for that is what marriage means,—that I don't think I could have the courage to embark upon the undertaking."
"You are flippant," said the widow sadly. "You pipe and joke while Rome is burning."
"One day, of course, I shall have to marry," he muttered, as if to himself.
She would have liked to ask him to Brineweald. She wanted a deep breath of him before he left. For some reason, however, for which she was not too anxious to account, she did not express this wish.
"Why will you have to?" she asked.