“I’m going to take him to Cecilia,” said she.
“I’m sure Cecilia will like him. I don’t think she’s looking well, Martha.”
“Poor child! You can’t expect a girl of her depth of feeling, her spirituality, to recover soon. You must remember, it’s been only a year and three months. This is the first time she’s been out, isn’t it?”
“I should not have believed she could be so disobedient as she has been in the past year,” said Allerton sourly. “The night of the opening of the gallery I ordered her to come down and help me receive. I shall never forget that she locked herself in her room. It shows how the poison of the example of the young people nowadays permeates.”
“But that was nearly a year ago, Edward. Be careful not to be harsh to her. She inherits—your imperiousness.” Mrs. Staunton hesitated after “inherits,” because the look in her brother-in-law’s eyes reminded her that his wife—her sister—after enduring for eight years the penitentiary he made of his home, fled from him and refused to return, and lived by herself in a cottage at Brookline until her death.
After talking to several of her guests, so that her action might not seem pointed, Mrs. Staunton took Frothingham where Cecilia was listening to Gilson’s animated exposition of the true, or Gilson, theory of portrait painting. A moment after Frothingham was introduced Mrs. Staunton took the reluctant Gilson away.
Cecilia looked after him, a quizzical expression in her eyes. “Do you know Mr. Gilson?” she asked.
“No; I’ve only just met him.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I can’t say. I’ve barely seen him.”