"Sir John was willing; he wanted but a hint from me to have shown all the ardour of a young lover. One even pictured verses—it is in this way that it takes aged politicians. One imagined a discreet wedding and almost by now the inevitable preparatory layette!—But Miss Bush would have none of it! When I approached her upon the subject she looked me straight in the face and said quite respectfully, but with a hauteur befitting a D'Estaire, that she had other views, and while sensible of my kindness she must decline the honour! I was immensely diverted."
"Danger is still ahead, then—She has told me just now that she means only to marry when she can gain her heart's desire—but what that is God—or the devil—alone knows."
Lady Garribardine looked at him shrewdly for a second; she did not speak, so Mr. Strobridge went on:
"By the way, she wants me to take her and Arabella to hear a debate in the House of Lords—may I?"
"Of course."
If he had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have remarked his aunt's tone, but he was absently staring out of the window and did not even see her face with its sagacious, querying expression.
"She is greatly interested in politics, I believe; she is well up in them already—she is well up in everything. I daresay she could open a bazaar, or give an address better than I could myself. I can spare her next Wednesday afternoon when the debate on the Land Bill will be in full swing. You can arrange it."
"I will.—Seraphim, isn't it pitiful about poor Läo!—Younger or older it would not have mattered quite so much—but at forty-two—Heavens! The only thing the poor darling had—her beauty—won't be worth looking at in a year or so. The mentality of women is beyond me, so utterly unaccountable their actions are."
"Not at all, my precious G. They are as plain as a pikestaff—only any man can be bamboozled by the silliest of them. They all answer to type and sex. Läo has the brains of her type, the female guinea pig, raised under artificial conditions which have altered, but not stifled, the guinea pig's strongest instinct—prolific reproduction. It came out in Läo, not in the desire to have a numerous family, but in an intense desire to attract the male—pas pour le bon motif, bien entendu!—but for variety—Then she falls in love at a foolish age, and the emotion, being one of nature, the instinct rights itself for the moment, and swamps the effect of artificial conditions. Hence the passion for the wedding ring—vows—the male in the cage, all unconscious preparation for a family—the last thing she would desire, in fact—and all sense of proportion lost sight of."