“Well, then perhaps I’d get rid of him some way, Miss Hester.”
“I certainly shouldn’t advise my brother to run the risk of having to do that, and all for a girl much too volatile to make him a good wife. Why, she is nearly half French.”
Bram looked at her quickly.
“Surely, Miss Hester, you who have travelled and been about the world, don’t think the worse of a lady for that?”
Miss Cornthwaite reddened, but she stuck to her guns.
“I hope I am above any silly insular prejudice,” she said coldly. “But I certainly think the French character too frivolous for an Englishman’s wife. Why, when Claire comes here, though she will sob as if her heart was breaking one moment at the humiliations her father exposes her to, she will be laughing heartily the next.”
“Poor child, poor child! Thank heaven she can,” said Bram with solemn tenderness which made Miss Cornthwaite just a little ashamed of herself. “And don’t you think a temper like that would come in handy for Mr. Christian’s wife, as well as for Mr. Biron’s daughter?”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Miss Cornthwaite very frigidly, as she stretched out her hand quickly for a fresh book to show him.
Poor Claire had no partisan here.