“She does—in her own way.”
“Exactly—that’s the rich relation all over! You may be miserable in any way you like, but if you’re to be happy you’ve got to be so in her way—and in her old gowns.”
“I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia’s old gowns,” Miss Trent interposed.
“Abroad, you mean?”
“I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad will help.”
“Of course—I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting its advantages negatively.”
“Negatively?”
“In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on what it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get away from a life like this.” He summed up in a disparaging glance the background of indigent furniture. “The question is how you’ll like coming back to it.”
She seemed to accept the full consequences of his thought. “I only know I don’t like leaving it.”
He flung back sombrely, “You don’t even put it conditionally then?”