“That is right, and wrong—nearer right than wrong, a little unjust to the husband.”
“Oh, it’s probably your fault that you are not absorbed in his business or profession. It ought to be as much yours as his. What does he do?”
“He edits a newspaper.”
“Oh, he’s the Mr. Howard. A very interesting, a very remarkable man.”
Marian was delighted by this appreciation. She talked with Shenstone again after dinner and was pleased that he was to be in the same box with her at the opera the next night. He had spent much of his time on the other side of the Atlantic. He was unusually well educated for an artist’s, and his mind was not developed in one direction only. Like Marian, his point of view was artistic and emotional. Like her he had a reverence for tradition, a deference to caste—the latter not offensive for the same reason that hers was not, because good birth and good breeding made him of the “high caste” and not a cringer with his eyes craned upward. It seemed in him, as in her, a sort of self-respect.
Marian showed a candid liking for his society and he was quick to take advantage of it. For a month they saw more and more each of the other, she discreet without deliberation and he discreet with deliberation. He talked to her of his work, of his ambition. He showed her himself without egotism. He made an impression upon her so distinct and so favourable that she admitted to herself that he was the most fascinating man—except one—whom she had ever met.
When Howard at last returned, defeated by corruption within his own party and for the time disgusted with politics, she at once had Shenstone at the house to dine. “What do you think of Mr. Shenstone?” she asked when they were alone.
“No wonder you’re enthusiastic about him. As he talked to me, I could hardly keep from laughing. It was your own views, almost your own words. He has the look of a great man. I think he will ‘arrive,’ as they say in the Bowery.”
Howard went out of his way to be agreeable to Shenstone, often inviting him to the house and giving him a commission to paint Marian. For the rest of the winter Shenstone was constantly in Marian’s company; so constantly that they were gossiped about, and all the women who were unpleasantly discussed “for cause” conspired to throw them together as much as possible.
One evening in the very end of the winter, Howard called to Marian from his dressing room: “Why, lady, Shenstone’s gone, hasn’t he? I’ve just read a note from him.”