Stacey was interested. “You like her, Catherine?” he inquired.
“Very much,” she replied, the old shyness back again, stronger than ever, in voice and face. Perhaps she was vexed with it and struggled against it, for: “The last time she came she brought her daughter, Mrs. Price, with her,” Catherine added, then bit her lip, lest she should have said something awkward.
“Marian?” Stacey exclaimed. But he was not perturbed. He had forgotten Marian completely in the last week. He was merely surprised; for he somehow could not fancy Marian and Catherine together.
“Mrs. Latimer is a fine woman, with an affected idiot of a husband,” Mr. Carroll observed. “Can’t say I care much for Marian.”
Stacey smiled, almost imperceptibly. What a straightforward loyal character his father had, he thought. Everything clear, black-and-white. And never more kindly than here now with Phil and Catherine. Stacey had a feeling of looking at his father from a long way off—or—or—at the reflection of him in a mirror. What an odd blurred evening—and pleasant! He fell into a reverie while the others talked. Why should there be this wistfulness about his father? Mr. Carroll had a strong personality; he could manage men; decisions snapped, clean-cut, from his mind. Perhaps he was wistful because he had no grown-up life outside of business. His ideas on general subjects were immature.
But before long Mr. Carroll rose. “Come on, Stacey!” he remarked. “Phil has to go to work early to-morrow, and Catherine must be tired, too. You don’t mind a grandfather calling you by your first name?” he asked her, with a pleasant smile.
“ ’Night, Phil!” said Stacey at the door, and shook his friend’s hand casually.
“Nice people, very!” his father observed, after they had driven for some minutes in silence. “But I don’t think Phil looks well, do you?”
“No?” returned Stacey, surprised. “I thought he seemed gayer to-night than for a long while. He’s always been atrociously thin, you know.”
But the strange soft sense of haziness vanished in the night. Next morning, after breakfast, Stacey stood looking absently out of his study window, with no sense but of a poignant emptiness.