“Is your father the only reason why you’re hesitating?”
She gave me a most expressive look.
“Except that it seems far, far too good to be true. I thought my life was quite over, as far as that sort of thing went, and that I was just one of those unlucky people who’d made a bad mistake. And then to find him—so good and dear and nice, and actually caring for me!”
“I fail to see anything so astounding in that last item.”
Nancy Fazackerly shook her head.
“I know what I’m like—what circumstances have made me,” she said simply. “Father is a very dominant personality, as you know, and I’ve never been very brave. Sometimes I wonder that I’ve got any individuality left at all. And then, being so badly off has made me calculating, and even mean, in tiny little ways that you probably wouldn’t even understand if I told you about them. You see, I always knew that the bills would make Father angry, and the thing I’m most afraid of in the world is that people should be angry with me. Often and often I’ve said what isn’t true so as not to disagree with other people. I daresay you won’t believe me....”
I believed her, on the contrary, without any difficulty at all, and I was touched by her naïveté, and by the pathos of her confession.
“That would be all over if you married Christopher.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course I suppose everyone, more or less, feels that if they could be happy they could be good, but if—if anything so wonderful as that happened to me, it would be the first great chance that I’d ever had in my life.”
I knew it was true.