"Ay! I heard something of that sort. She must be a curious person to be so easily affected, or it was thoughtless of her husband to bring her out too soon. He is an odd kind of man though, is he not? Absent, and that kind of thing?"
"Ye-es; his heart is in his work, and he is generally thinking about it."
"So I had imagined. What odd people you know, Arthur! Your acquaintances all seem such strange people--so different from your father's and mine!"
"Yes, mother," said Caterham, with a repetition of the sad smile; "perhaps you're right generally. Your friends would scarcely care for me, and I am sure I do not care for them. But Geoffrey Ludlow became known to me through his old intimacy with Annie--our Annie."
"Ye-es. I scarcely know why 'our Annie,' though. You see, both your father and I have many blood-relations, more or less distant, on either side; and it would not be particularly convenient if the mere fact of their being blood-relations compelled us to acknowledge them as 'ours.' Not that Ive any thing to say against Miss Maurice, though; on the contrary, she's a very charming girl. At one time I thought that--However, let that pass. She holds quite a different position now; and I think every one will allow that my treatment of her is what it should be."
"Of course, mother. No one would dream of doubting it."
"Well, perhaps not, Arthur; but you're such a recluse, you know, that you're scarcely a judge of these things--one does not know what people won't say. The world is so full of envy and jealousy, and all that, I'm sure my position in regard to the matter is any thing but an agreeable one. Here I am, having to act chaperon to this girl, who is known now as an heiress; and all kinds of men paying her attention, simply on account of her wealth. What I suffer when we're out together, you can't conceive. Every night, wherever we may be, there is a certain set of men always hanging about her, waiting for an introduction--persons whose acquaintance cannot do her the slightest good, and with whom she is yet quite as willing to talk or to dance as she is with he most available parti in London."
Caterham smiled again. "You forget, mother, that she's not accustomed to the kind of life--"
"No; I don't forget anything of the kind, Arthur. It is her not being accustomed to it that is my greatest trouble. She is as raw as a child of seventeen Aft her first drawing-room. If she had any savoir faire, any knowledge of society, I should be perfectly at ease. A girl of any appreciation would know how to treat these people in an instant. Why, I know myself, that when I was far younger than Miss Maurice, I should have felt a kind of instinctive warning against two-thirds of the men with whom Annie Maurice is as talkative and as pleasant as though they were really persons whose acquaintance it was most desirable that she should make."
"And yet Annie is decidedly a clever girl."