“No, I’ll be hanged if she’s ugly,” said Frank.
“No, indeed,” agreed his mother; “look what pretty hair she has, and pretty hands, and then her manner is so delightful. And there is such a stylish look about her, too! Don’t you agree with me, Mr Kershaw?”
“Yes; I do,” was the reply, made as evenly as though the subject under discussion had been Andrina or Condaas, or any other girl in the district.
“Well, I think she’s a horrid girl,” persisted May. “Style, indeed? What you call style, I call ‘side.’ She puts on a kind of condescending, talk-down-to-you sort of manner. These Dutch girls,” with withering emphasis on the national adjective, “are that way. They go away from home for a little and come back as stuck-up as they can be. That one is too grand for anything—in her own estimation. A horrid, stuck-up thing.”
Colvin, listening, winced. The idea expressed, the very wording of its expression, grated upon him horribly, apart from the identity of the subject thereof. In such wise would May from time to time lapse, and become, as Aletta had put it to herself, “common.”
He made no comment upon her vehement and ill-natured dictum, knowing perfectly well that it was uttered quite as much as a challenge to himself as to relieve the utterer’s feelings; and he was far too old and experienced to be drawn by any such transparent device. But as they re-entered the sitting-room the jarring effect of the words was intensified, bringing back in vivid contrast the last time he was there; that evening when he had been so near turning the most momentous corner which could meet him within the career of life. He had not turned it. A warning hand had, so to speak, been held up. This girl—he could see her as she was then, in her sweet alluring beauty, soft-voiced, appealing. He could see her now, hard-eyed, vindictive, and expressing herself in a manner that savoured of the wash-tub. What a near thing it had been—how narrow his escape!
He would have been tied fast, bound hand and foot. Even now there was a certain length of loose coil around him, which would need some care and judgment entirely to cast off. Still there was no hard-and-fast bond, and looking backward over the events of the past three weeks or so, he felt lost in thankfulness because of the trivial, fortuitous incident which had availed to stay his tongue when it had so nearly spoken.
“You are not particularly lively, after all this time, Colvin.”
He started, and put down the paper he had pretended to read, while the above reflections were coursing through his brain. They were alone together in the room, he and May. Frank, divested of his coat and waistcoat, could be seen in the distance doing odd jobs, and Mrs Wenlock had withdrawn for an afternoon nap. Her visitors, she declared, although dear girls, had tired her.
“No, I’m afraid I’m not,” he said. “I believe I’m tired. Well, let’s talk.”