"Look at that, oh beau sabreur," she cried, "and behold the future Lady Barclay, and rejoice."
"Hallo, hallo!" His boorishness disappeared like a flash, and a surprising amount of boyish beauty and delight rested on his face for a moment, like the light from a passing torch. He kissed her and murmured a few words of delight and sympathy, and taking up his cup walked about the room, sipping tea and talking to himself as much as to the others.
"Good girl, good girl—you'll be very happy—Sir John Barclay's a fine man. I knew it. I saw it coming! I'm not surprised. Violet, what did I tell you? Well, are you proud of your baby, old woman?"
He gave his wife a rough thump on the back as he passed her chair. "He's a baronet too. Delightful fellow, delightful." He stopped short, drawing himself up and preening in the way that was half infuriating and half pathetic. "Fancy his being my son-in-law with that white hair!"
Mrs. Walbridge really could not bear him when he did that, so she rose, ashamed of her feeling of disgust, and went out of the room.
Presently she heard the door slam, and knew that Paul had left. So, after her daily interview with the cook, she went up to her study, and sat down to think. Sir John Barclay would be coming to-day to see her, and the interview would be a difficult one for her, for she was ashamed of her daughter's decision; she was a bad liar, and she had always shunned with a kind of fastidious pain, the sight of an old man in love with a young girl. Then, too, there was Oliver, and her intimate knowledge of him. Poor Oliver! He would be coming, and he would have to be told, and his queer face would have that dreadful look of pain in it, and then he would laugh and be ridiculous, and that would be still worse. She wished Ferdie would say something to her about their business affairs, but he hadn't said a word. He seemed able to put troublesome thoughts clean away out of his mind, but she couldn't. What was to become of them all? If only this book would please Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne!
She heard the telephone bell ring faintly, and opening the door after a moment heard the sound of Grisel's voice a little high and unnatural, it seemed to her.
"He's the greatest dear," the girl was saying. "I knew you and Moreton would be glad."
Mrs. Walbridge closed the door, and sat down. She was so used to moulding events in her novels that it seemed to her intolerable and almost ridiculous that in real life, in this matter of her little daughter, for instance, events so obstinately refused to be moulded. She ought to be able to make Oliver Wick suddenly rich enough to snatch her away from this monstrous old man, who coveted her youth and beauty. Unconsciously Mrs. Walbridge had fallen into the language of her novels—and love should triumph among roses in the last chapter. But now she could no nothing. Grisel had made her choice, and the old monster was to triumph. Her only comfort in this dreary reverie was that Paul, selfish, hard Paul, should unconsciously have taken sides with her in her hatred of the marriage. She had never understood Paul. He was to her not so much like a closed book as like a book written in a foreign language of which she knew only a word or two here and there. She had expected him to be pleased, because of Sir John Barclay's riches, and lo and behold he was as displeased as she was, and full of a regret that, though bitterly expressed, was, she knew, based on a genuine sentimental disapproval of mercenary marriages.