“It’s very mysterious.” Frothingham shook his head. “I fear I shall never learn. Why don’t they put it all in a book, as we do? Then we could take it at the university instead of Greek.”
He looked at Honoria. She was giving her plate a scornful smile. Her father looked at her also, and reddened as he noted her expression, and shifted the conversation abruptly to the day’s run. Frothingham was becoming interested in Honoria, now that he had assured himself of her eligibility. She was not beautiful, not especially distinguished-looking. But she had as little interest in him as in the rest of her surroundings, and that piqued him. Then, too, her figure was graceful and strong; and when her face did light up it showed strength of character, and either what she said or the way she said it created a vivid impression of personality. He soon felt that she liked him. Her manner toward him was friendlier far than her manner toward her father, her lack of respect for whom was scantily concealed.
The night before they landed she and Frothingham sat on deck late, her father dozing in a chair at a discreet distance. Both were depressed—the sense that they were once more about to plunge into the whirlpool of life made each sad. Honoria was remembering the past; Frothingham was brooding over the future. If he had dared he would have proposed to her. “She’d make a satisfactory wife,” he said to himself. “She’s just enough English to understand me and to make my people like her. She wouldn’t get on their nerves. And she doesn’t talk through her nose except when she’s excited. She’s a little too clever—but a steady goer, once the harness is on. If I could get her it would be good business, good swift business.”
“You’re a queer sort,” he said to her suddenly. “Most girls are full of getting married. But I don’t believe you give it a thought.”
“I sha’n’t ever marry,” she replied.
He laughed. “Oh, I say, that’s nonsense. Every girl must marry. You may as well make up your mind to it, close your eyes, shut your teeth, and dash in.”
“You might not think it,” she said after a pause, “but I am like you English—I’m horribly, incurably sentimental. I know it’s foreign to my bringing up, but——” Her jaw set, and her eyes fixed upon something visible only to her in the blackness beyond the rail. “My bringing up was all wrong and rotten,” she went on presently. “I don’t know just how or where, but I know it’s so. I began to feel it dimly when I visited my aunt in America four years ago. My mother died when I was a baby, and I was trained by my father and governesses—governesses that suited him. My father—— But I needn’t tell you, and you probably don’t sympathise with me. His one idea in life is social position. It seems to me a contemptible ambition for a man. With women—there’s some excuse for it. We’re naturally petty. And, so far as I can see it, as the world is made up, if we haven’t got that we haven’t got anything. We can’t have any other ambition—it’s the only one open to us. Well, I haven’t got even ambition. I want—that is, I wanted——”
She paused again, resisting the mood that was urging her on to confidence. “By Jove,” thought Frothingham, “it wouldn’t be hard for a man to like her.”
“No matter what it was I wanted,” she went on, “I didn’t get it—and sha’n’t, ever.” She turned her face toward him. “You may misunderstand me—may think I am in love and hopelessly disappointed—there’s a story of that kind going round. But I’m not in love. I was—but I’m not now.”
“Do you think one ever gets over it?” he asked absently.