“No, no,” he laughed. “I dislike women intensely.”
“Thank you!” she smiled. “On behalf of my daughter and myself, thank you!” She was silent for a while. “I wonder why you ever married?” she said, at length.
“We all have our romances,” he answered.
“Romances!” She uttered the word with bitterness. “What is romance? Just Nature’s fig-leaf. It is something that Youth employs to disguise something else. Youth is a calamity. I really sometimes thank Heaven for middle age and old age: they bring one at any rate the blessing of indifference. I’m thankful that I’m an old woman.”
“You’re not old,” Jim replied. “You don’t look forty. And you’re in the pink of health.”
“Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’ve nothing much to complain of in that respect. All I want is a new pair of legs and a clean heart....”
“Oh, your heart’s all right,” he told her, putting his hand on hers.
“No,” she answered. “I’m a bad old woman. I earn a living by writing indecently about women’s clothes, and how to wear them so as to destroy men’s virtue. I sit about in night-clubs; I play cards on Sundays; I’ll dine with anybody on earth who’ll give me a good dinner and a bottle of wine; and I never go to church. What d’you think Eversfield would say to that?”
“Oh, Eversfield be hanged,” he replied, with feeling. “You’re a good sort, and you’re kind. That’s better than all the rotten respectability of Eversfield.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said. “Respectability has its merits. You go and spend a few weeks with the sort of people I mix with, and you’ll find Miss Proudfoote of the Grange like a breath of fresh air.”