Stacey wondered what Mrs. Latimer thought about it all. Oh, she would probably be as detached as always, humorously but not unkindly amused by it. However, he had no chance to find out. Mrs. Latimer was much too busy receiving.
His one real curiosity was to know how Marian would look at him when, in the line, he shook her hand and Ames’s. He decided that she would be candid, simple and virginal, as became a bride, with no hint of anything in her greeting. But he was wrong. He was unfair to Marian, fancying her far more deliberate than she really was. The swift look she gave him was strange and enigmatic, and stirred him. There was a touch of defiance in it, as though she had said: “Well, you would have it this way! Do you like what you’ve done?” And he could not blame her if the words she spoke were merely the proper words. There were people all about.
Later he came upon his sister, Julie.
“Oh, Stacey,” she said, “why couldn’t you be nice and go with me to the wedding? Jimmy’s out of town, so I went all alone. I saw you across the church from me and thought I’d pick you up afterward, but when I came out I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
He smiled at the protective solicitude in her tone. “Oh, well,” he returned, “I’ll drive back with you to your house for a little chat when you’re ready to go.”
“I’m ready now,” she said quickly, and they went out to her electric.
No one else had ventured to make any comment to Stacey when Marian’s engagement to Ames Price had been announced; even Mr. Carroll had only looked at his son in an odd puzzled way. But Julie had ventured. She had asserted loyally that Stacey was much too good for Marian, and that Marian didn’t care whom she married so long as he had money. He had reflected at the time that, though Julie simplified things down to bare essentials, it was essentials that she selected. She was not unlike their father in this, he thought. She returned to the subject now, as they glided along the city streets.
“I don’t care!” she broke out hotly. “I think she’s horrid! Of course I know it must have been you who broke off the engagement—now wasn’t it, Stacey? Why won’t you admit it? Why, anybody would be proud to marry you!—but then for her to go and marry a stupid person like Ames Price, old enough to be her father, too, less than three months later,—why, I think it’s cheap! That’s what Marian is—cheap!”
Stacey laughed, amused at her desire to comfort him. He enjoyed being with his sister; nor was there anything patronizing in his feeling for her. He was not doing so admirably with a complex mind that he could afford to look comfortably down upon Julie for having a simple mind. And she was not stupid. He thought she did rather well with life.
“Oh,” he observed, “Ames isn’t as old as all that! He’s only forty or thereabouts. I’m almost thirty-five.”