“Are you by any possibility fancying that you can take better care of him than we can?” asked Ferdie, relapsing into his laugh, and sending another pebble skimming over the shining waters. “Leaving Cicely aside, I am the jolliest of fathers.”
“It must be that he does not know,” Eve thought; “whatever his faults, hypocrisy is not one of them.”
But this only made him the more terrible to her—a man who could change so unconsciously into a savage.
“Granting the jolliness, I wish you would ask Cicely,” she said; “do it for my sake. I am lonely, I shall grow lonelier. It would be everything to me to have him.”
“Of course you will grow lonelier,” said Ferdie. He turned towards her, leaning on his elbow. “Come, let me advise you; don’t be a forlorn old maid. All women ought to marry; it is much better for them.”
“Are they then so sure to be happy?” asked Eve, sarcastically.
“Of course they are.—The nice ones.”
Eve looked at him. “Even when married to brutes?—to madmen?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t select a brute. As for the madmen, they are locked up,” answered Ferdie, comfortably.
Eve rose. “I don’t know what I shall say next—if I stay here,” was her thought.