“If they thought she was going in the right direction.”
Mrs. Sandworth gave him up, and drifted off into speculation. “I wonder what she could have found in that man to think of! A girl brought up as she’s been!”
“Perhaps she was only snatching a little sensible talk where she could get it.”
“But they didn’t talk sensibly. Marietta said Lydia tried, one of the times when they were going over it with her, Lydia tried to tell her mother some of the things they said that night when he took her home from here. Marietta said they were ‘too sickish!’ ‘Flat Sunday-school cant about wanting to be good,’ and all that sort of thing.”
“That certainly wouldn’t have tempted Marietta from the path of virtue and sharp attention to a good match,” murmured the doctor. “Nobody can claim that there’s anything very seductive to the average young lady in Rankin’s fanaticism.”
“Oh, you admit he’s a fanatic!” Mrs. Sandworth seized on a valuable piece of driftwood which the doctor’s tempest had thrown at her feet.
“Everybody who’s worth his salt is a fanatic.”
“Not Paul. Everybody says he’s so sane and levelheaded.”
“There isn’t a hotter one in creation!”
“Than Paul?”