Lucilla closed the door and sat down, seeming undisturbed by so cataclysmic an announcement of finality.
“I’m off on my own, after this. Father has utterly mucked up my entire life, as I think I told you in my letter, and he can’t see what he has done!”
Lucilla wondered whether Adrian had spent two and a half hours in endeavouring to open his parent’s eyes to his own work of destruction.
“Would you mind telling me exactly what has happened?”
Adrian embarked upon a tone of gloomy narrative.
“Well, I don’t know whether you had any idea that I am—was—well, frightfully hard hit by that girl Olga. Not just thinking her pretty and clever, and all that sort of thing, you know, though of course she was—is, I mean. But simply knowing that she was the one and only person I should ever care for. Of course, I know now that I was mistaken in her, to a certain extent, and I can tell you, Lucilla, that it’s very hard on a man to be as thoroughly disillusioned as I’ve been. It’s enough to shatter one’s faith in women for life.”
“But what did Father do?” said Lucilla, as her brother seemed inclined to lose himself in the contemplation of his own future mysogyny.
“What did he do?” echoed Adrian bitterly. “He and old Duffle had the—the audacity to meet together and discuss my private affairs, and take upon themselves to decide that anything between me and Olga ought to be put an end to. I must say, I thought that kind of thing had gone out with the Middle Ages, when people walled up their daughters alive, and all that kind of tosh. And how Olga, of all people, put up with it I can’t imagine; but they seemed to have pitched some yarn about my not being able to afford to marry, and frightened her with the idea of my being after her money, I suppose.”
“But Adrian, had you asked her to marry you?”
“No, of course not. But I did think we might have been engaged. Then I wouldn’t have had to put up with seeing a lot of other fellows after her,” said Adrian naïvely.