“You are so abrupt and—and practical, Honoria,” said Catherine plaintively. “But you are a dear. I should never marry a man unless I loved him.”
Honoria looked faintly cynical. “Certainly not. But surely you can love any man you make up your mind to marry. What is your imagination for?”
At Sherry’s that night, besides Honoria, Catherine, Longview, and Frothingham, there were at Longview’s table Mrs. Carnarvon, of the hunting set, and Joe Wallingford—he hunts and writes verse, both badly, and looks and talks, both extremely well. Honoria devoted herself to Wallingford and so released Catherine and Frothingham each upon the other—she listened for a few seconds now and then to note their progress.
“It’s a go,” she said to herself with the matchmaker’s thrill of triumph, as the cold dessert was served. She saw that Frothingham had ceased to listen, and so had ceased to puzzle; his eyeglass was trained steadily and sympathetically upon Catherine’s fascinating beauty—why weary the brain when it might rest and enjoy itself through the eyes? Catherine was talking on and on, quoting poetry, telling Frothingham of her emotions, telling him of his emotions—he did not have them, but she was so earnest that he was half convinced.
“When you said this afternoon that you liked things quiet and comfortable,” she said, “I felt that it was splendidly in keeping with your character. I saw that you hated all this noise and display, that you like to get away in your own corner of your beautiful England and live grandly and quietly—near Nature.”
If Catherine had not been beautiful and rich he would have said to himself, “What rubbish!” But, as it was, he thought her profound and spiritual. And he said, trying to touch bottom and get a firm stand upon firm earth, “I think you’d like Beauvais.”
“I’m sure I should,” replied Catherine with enthusiasm. “Honoria was showing me the photographs of it. I admire the great, stately old house. But I liked best of all the picture of the woods and the brook. It reminded me of those lines of Coleridge’s—they are so beautiful—where he speaks of the brook—
“‘In the leafy month of June
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.’