“No. I am more anxious to distinguish myself than ever, as things have turned out. A man who suddenly finds himself to be married to a rich wife feels as if he had got off at a false start, and is put at a disadvantage. But so far I own my wife has taken up all my time. You see, she didn’t know she was going to be rich any more than I did, and being hardly more than a child, she wants as much looking after at first as a baby at the edge of a pond.”
“And this is the sort of woman who gets a man’s best love!” thought Ella half bitterly, half disdainfully.
“And of course you choose her friends for her,” suggested Ella, not quite hiding her feeling.
“I can’t quite do that, yet at least,” said George. “Nobody but all of you has got further than acquaintance yet.”
“But of course you are very particular about those acquaintances?”
Decidedly Ella was in her most disagreeable mood to-night.
“I do my best,” said he briefly.
“And of course it’s all nonsense about the smoking-parties, and Captain Pascoe being there nearly every night.”
George felt a shock. Mentioned in that manner, the evening calls of his friends, the admittance among the callers of a man whom he cordially disliked but whom he had no grounds strong enough for insulting, were heavy accusations.
“I see my own friends as freely as I did when I was a bachelor, certainly,” said he, cold in his turn. “Nouna is too sensible to prevent that. As for Captain Pascoe, he has not been in our house more than three times at the outside.”