"It's no affair of his," she retorted promptly, meaning not Plato, but Dudley.
"Oh! he said he knew it wasn't. I think he even wished it were. You're too unconventional for him —he frankly admits it—but he admits also that you're good-looking enough to warrant the unconventionality of a Hottentot—and you are, you dear, bad thing, though your forehead's too high and your chin's too long and your nose isn't all that a nose should be."
"Thanks," drawled Eugenia amicably. "But Dudley's a nice fellow, all the same. He gets on splendidly with papa—and I bless him for it."
"He gets on well with everybody—even his mother—which makes me suspect that he's a Job masquerading as an Apollo. By the way, Mrs. Webb wants you to join some society she's getting up called the 'Daughters of Duty.'"
"Oh, I can't! I can't!" protested Eugenia distressfully. "I detest 'Daughter' things, and I have a rooted aversion to my duty. But if she comes to me I'll join it—I know I shall! How did you keep out of it?"
"I didn't. I'm in it. It seems that our duty is confined to 'preserving the antiquities' of Kingsborough—so I began by presenting a jar of pickled cucumbers to Uncle Ish. I trust they won't be the death of him, but he was the only antiquity in sight."
She gave the smouldering log a push with her foot, and it broke apart, scattering a shower of sparks. "I don't know any other woman so much admired and so little loved," she mused of Mrs. Webb.
"Papa worships her," said Eugenia. "All men do—at a distance. She's the kind of woman you never get near enough to to feel that she is flesh. Now, Aunt Chris is just the opposite. No one ever gets far enough away from her to feel that she's a saint—which she is."
"It's odd she never married," wondered Sally.
"She never had time to." Eugenia clasped her hands behind her head and looked up at the high, plastered ceiling. "She never happened to be in a place where she could be spared. But you know her lover died when she was young," she added. "It broke her heart, but it did not destroy her happiness. She has been happy for forty years with a broken heart."