"It makes her unhappy, I suppose," said Lady Wharton, "because she can't do what we all want."
"Fall, lall! She'd have wanted it herself if nobody else had wished it. I'm surprised that Arthur should be so much taken with her."
"You'd better say nothing more about it, mother."
"I don't mean to say anything more about it. It's nothing to me. Arthur can do very well in the world without Emily Wharton. Only a girl like that will sometimes make a disgraceful match; and we should all feel that."
"I don't think Emily will do anything disgraceful," said Lady Wharton. And so they parted.
In the meantime the two brothers were smoking their pipes in the housekeeper's room, which, at Wharton, when the Fletchers or Everett were there, was freely used for that purpose.
"Isn't it rather quaint of you," said the elder brother, "coming down here in the middle of term time?"
"It doesn't matter much."
"I should have thought it would matter;—that is, if you mean to go on with it."
"I'm not going to make a slave of myself about it, if you mean that. I don't suppose I shall ever marry,—and as for rising to be a swell in the profession, I don't care about it."