“Not so much as I suspect her,” I said, “as a judge of brides.”
The whole thing infuriated me.
Another cause of vexation at this time was Mrs. O’Gorman.
We are annoyed when our old friends like our new friends too much; but we are even more annoyed when our old friends refuse to share our antipathies to new acquaintances. Mrs. O’Gorman disappointed me deeply by not finding Eustace as unsuitable as I did. Perhaps she was only being wilfully provocative, but the effect on me was the same.
“A very intelligent old lady,” Eustace called her, to me. Perhaps a little too outspoken, a little lacking in taste. But very refreshing. A character, in fact. No one enjoyed studying a character more than he. And there were so few of them!
I have just said that few things are more annoying than an old friend’s approval of a new acquaintance that we dislike. But I think that to hear an old friend patronizingly appraised by an incompetent critic is almost worse. Mrs. O’Gorman was a character: there was no doubt about that; but Eustace had only a glimmering of that fact.
My peace of mind was further impaired by Rose’s tendency to play with the joke that I also must marry. It was not a new idea; but hitherto she had been very light with me.
“What we must do, Dombeen,” she had said to me one day not long after her decision to go to London to Mrs. Lovell, “is to get you settled.”
“What on earth do you mean?” I had asked.
“A wife,” she said, laughing. “You mustn’t be left all alone.”