“Yes.”
“I thought you told me, that when you first saw her she produced on you a very different impression.”
“So she did. But then—she was a very different woman.”
Ella’s mouth twitched rather scornfully. She thought that the weird prettiness of Nouna’s little wasted face had bewitched even this middle-aged doctor.
“She is scarcely even yet an ideal companion for a man of intellect,” she said with a slight touch of her worst, most priggish manner.
“H’m, I don’t know,” said the doctor. “Your man of intellect is generally a man of something else besides; and the housekeeper-wife and the blue-stocking wife both frequently leave as much to be desired as—well, say, the flower-wife, if once the flower learns to turn to the sun, as, I think, little Mrs. Lauriston has done.”
“She is fond of him,” agreed Ella rather grudgingly.
“And what more does he ask of her?”
“Nothing more now; but will it be always so?”
“Who can tell? But love on both sides is a good matrimonial foundation. Have they any money?”